


Retrograde

by Fiona_Fawkes



Series: Retrograde [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Amnesia, M/M, Post Reichenbach
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-06
Updated: 2013-01-06
Packaged: 2017-11-23 20:41:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 40,559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/626323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fiona_Fawkes/pseuds/Fiona_Fawkes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Sherlock Holmes stepped onto the roof of St Bart’s to confront Moriarty, he had every faith that the combined might of the Holmes brothers was going to win out over Moriarty’s machinations once and for all.  He was, perhaps, a bit over confident.  When faced with the choice between almost certain death and jeopardizing the lives of those closest to him, Sherlock chose to make the ultimate sacrifice for their safety.</p>
<p>This is the story of those people doing what they could to pay him back.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Retrograde

**Author's Note:**

  * For [BootsnBlossoms](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BootsnBlossoms/gifts).



_[Retrograde amnesia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retrograde_amnesia) is a loss of access to events that occurred, or information that was learned, before an injury or the onset of a disease._

. . .

_Please God, let me live. I just need more time._

A desperate plea made by a desperate man, dying in the desert.

More time, John Watson would later discover, wasn’t necessarily a good thing.

Sherlock’s death had affected John in ways he could never have predicted. John had lost friends before. Good friends. Men who had saved his own skin only to turn around and have their own torn off by an IED. John had found himself too busy for mourning as for every soldier that died, another grievously injured was waiting in line and there was simply no time for grief. Now, though, time was all he had.

And it was agony. John had nothing but time to sit around and do nothing but think. In a desperate attempt to escape the pain, John had taken to walking. At first, he hadn’t left the flat for anything but groceries and appointments with his therapist, but John soon found himself taking the long way home, putting off the moment when he’d have to return to an empty flat. Eventually, John began taking walks simply for the sake of walking. He took long, meandering strolls through the less scenic parts of London like the rail yards and abandoned industrial sites. _Sherlock’s London_ , he’d thought with a wistful smile. Hardly the kind of places you’d find in the “London: A to Z”, but oddly enough, no one ever bothered John on his sojourns. For a while there he’d thought he was seeing the same faces amongst London’s homeless. He’d blown 300 quid before he accepted that none of them were just waiting for the opportune moment to impart some last message to him from his friend.

So, instead of hunting for clues in the last case Sherlock had given him, John had finally given over his walks to the simple luxury of not thinking too much. One foot in front of the other. Life moved on, and he was moving with it just fine, thank you very much, although a bit slower than he once moved by Sherlock’s side.

Which had led John to where he’d be on the day that would be forever etched into his mind as _that_ day. It was a pleasant day, warm and not too breezy. A perfect day for a walk. One of those days where a man could just meander for hours on end and let his mind wander to anything, or nothing at all. In fact, John was so busy focusing on not thinking that it took him an embarrassingly long time to realize that the sleek black sedans he kept passing as they sat idling on the curb were actually the same one over and over again. He came to an awkward halt and stood staring, letting the people of London weave and dodge around him while he forced himself to take a few deep breaths, whether to calm temper or nerves, he wasn’t sure. Finally, the window of the back seat slid down, revealing Mycroft’s assistant, “Anthea”, which was only marginally less upsetting than had it been the man himself.

John stuffed his fists into his pockets, in what was probably a pointless effort to hide his discomfort from her shrewd eyes. “How much money does the government waste on petrol following citizens on their walks?”

She didn’t look up from her phone. “Please get into the car, Doctor Watson.”

He jutted out his chin in a show of defiance. “And if I don’t?” 

Her mouth smiled but it didn’t reach her eyes. “Then you will never know what it is that Mister Holmes has to tell you.”

“What makes you think I could possibly want to hear anything that your smarmy boss has to say to me?”

She set her phone in her lap and considered John for a moment. It was the eye contact that did it for him. It put him on edge and the personal consideration made John feel like something about this day was different. “Believe me, John. You’ll want to hear this.”

. . .

John got in the car, but Anthea soundly ignored his prodding for more information and they spent the next twenty minutes in silence. John deposited at the steps of the Diogenes club and the car drove off as soon as the car door had closed behind him, taking Anthea and her gratingly knowing smile away. John had to fight the unnatural feeling crawling up his spine as he slowly climbed the white marble steps. Nothing good had ever come of meeting Mycroft here. John almost preferred the subtle challenge of meeting in abandoned factories and car parks because those places felt like neutral ground and didn’t come with piles of emotional baggage. John was only ever brought to the club when Mycroft wanted to apologize and John had long since grown deaf to _I’m sorry_ because how the hell was he supposed to reply to that?

_You should be._

John skipped the spacious lounge just inside the front door and aimed straight for the stairs to the second floor. There, a man in white gloves gave him a curt nod and showed John into a large office, shutting the door quietly behind him.

John scowled at the back of the man standing in front of the large window overlooking the street and steeled himself for whatever it is that he had been pulled in here for. “What do you want, Mycroft?”

Mycroft Holmes seemed to be reading something on his the phone when John walked in, but he quickly slipped the device into his breast pocket as he turned around and plastered on his stiff-upper-lipped smile of a greeting. “Ah, Doctor Watson. So kind of you to join me. Do have a seat. Would you care for refreshment?”

“Let’s just get on with it. It’s been what?” He shrugged. “Almost a year now since we last spoke – in this very room, if I’m not mistaken. I know it’s been a while but I don’t remember parting on such civil terms. So allow me to repeat myself: what do you want?”

“I’m here to offer you a second chance, John.” Use of his given name, as opposed to the titles of _Captain_ or _Doctor_ – designed to put one at ease. It made John’s stomach clench.

“At?”

"Mycroft perched on the corner of the massive desk, propping a thick manila folder on his bent knee. “How much do you know about what was really going with James Moriarty there at the end?”

John couldn’t quite hold back an annoyed snort. “He made our lives a living hell, for one thing. Lorded that magic computer code of his over our heads and made us all dance for him.”

Mycroft nodded. “I was thinking more of the logistics of the situation. It was a great game of chess that Moriarty played, and you were but one of the pieces. I’ve read the statement you made to Scotland Yard, of course. I saw to it that the authorities were gently encouraged not to pursue charges against you for assault and fleeing police custody. You’re welcome, by the way.” Mycroft tossed the folder back onto the desk and folded his hands in front of him. “Why don't you tell me more about the day Sherlock died.”

John swallowed against the nausea building inside him. “We were in the lab, Sherlock and I. Moriarty got someone to make a fake call from Emergency Services, telling me that Mrs Hudson had been attacked. It got me out of the way so that he could somehow lure Sherlock up onto the roof. I don’t really know where he got off to after Sherlock…” John shook his head against the memory of the sound made by Sherlock’s body when it connected with concrete. “I wasn’t really paying a lot of attention to things, well, _after_. Ended up in A &E myself with a mild concussion, but then, you already knew that." 

"Anything else," Mycroft prompted. 

"I'm sorry, Mycroft, but no. Whatever Moriarty has gotten up to, I’ve not seen hide nor hair of him since he turned up at that reporter’s flat. There have been no taunting texts or cards in the post so I've assumed that I’m just not interesting enough to be worth his time anymore. Not that I’m complaining, mind you. Why? Do you know something about him?”

Mycroft’s tone and expression were perfectly even. “He’s dead, John. He died up on the roof with Sherlock, leaving us with quite a snarl to untangle.” John felt his eyes grew almost comically wide, and Mycroft indicated one of the leather armchairs to the side of the room. “If you’d like to take that seat now-”

“Yeah,” John nodded absently. Why fight at this point? He was there, after all. John eased himself into one of the chairs and leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees and putting his face in his hands. Mycroft stood up and flipped through the files on his desk for a moment while John collected himself - an unexpected consideration from the supposed _Ice Man_. After a moment he slipped the files into his briefcase and took a seat in the chair opposite John. 

John took a deep breath and asked, “Can you at least tell me how it happened?”

"Sherlock had alerted me that he was meeting with Moriarty. I had a team of agents monitoring the confrontation via Sherlock’s phone, as well as a marksman on the roof of the building across the street. All were waiting for my brother's signal to take Moriarty out, which Sherlock was supposed to give as soon as he could confirm or refute the existence of the computer code that Moriarty took such pleasure in dangling before us. But that signal never came."

John looked up sharply, uncertainty marred his face. “Sherlock, he didn’t –” John cut himself off, uncertain that he really wanted to know. “Tell me Moriarty didn’t turn him into a killer?”

"No, John. Moriarty took his own life.”

“I don’t understand. If Moriarty were dead, then Sherlock... Why did he…”

“It wasn’t over, John. Not exactly. James Moriarty had arranged for a bit of leverage against my brother. Something that neither he nor I had prepared for.” Mycroft took a deep breath, released it slowly and sat forward in his chair, mirroring John’s own position. “There were three assassins, targeting the three people Sherlock cared about most: Mrs. Hudson, Detective Inspector Lestrade, and you, John.”

John swallowed against the lump in his throat that the information created. He’d never told anyone but his nightmares of sun and sand had long since been usurped by the smell of chlorine and the look on Sherlock’s face as a wretched voice promised to burn the heart out of him while red dots danced across John’s chest. "What, you're his brother and you didn't make the cut?"

Mycroft actually laughed. "James Moriarty may have been smart but that would have been awfully ambitious, even for him."

"You forget, Mycroft. The man stole the crown jewels."

"No you forget,” Mycroft corrected him sharply. “James Moriarty didn’t steal anything. He just broke in to prove that he could. The crown's treasures never left their case."

"But with his code -"

"There was no code.” Mycroft’s expression softened the barest amount, and he sighed “No, Moriarty compromised the three most secure places in England the same way that criminals have been doing so for centuries - through bribery and blackmail of the people Her Majesty’s people should have been able to trust."

"How do you know this?"

"Because he told us, or told Sherlock, rather. All of this was later confirmed, of course."

John wished he couldn't picture Sherlock keeping something so monumental from him but he could. Sherlock held no reservations about leaving him in the dark. He never had and John wasn't sure just why it hurt so much now to hear that he'd done it again. He’d asked for help, though, even if it was from Mycroft. John found some small comfort in knowing that at least he hadn’t attempted to best Moriarty on his own.

"Sherlock had deduced Moriarty's end game, to some extent. He knew that the ‘fall’ that Moriarty had spoken of needed to be literal and so he came to me. Together, we set up a contingency plan should the situation warrant it."

John looked up sharply, his heart suddenly beating much harder, much louder. "You did _what_?"

"We planned to stage his suicide." Mycroft broke eye contact and scratched at the cuticle of his left thumb – a nervous habit looking remarkably out of place on a man otherwise so terribly put together. "Unfortunately things didn't go exactly as we’d hoped."

John’s heartbeat was rushing furiously in his ears now, but he needed to know. "Go on," he bit out.

Mycroft nodded, making fleeting eye contact, before stoutly addressing the far wall. "Sherlock had stepped onto the edge over-looking Giltspur Street. He saw the lorry that we’d appropriated from the institutional launderette service fifteen meters short of its target near the bus stand. That was supposed to be his safe landing. We had people in place – agents who could be trusted as well as members of Sherlock’s own ‘homeless network’. They posed as helpful Samaritans on the street who would act as interference until he could roll out of the truck and his ‘body’ could be staged on the sidewalk." Mycroft looked over at John. “His landing wasn’t in place due to something so mundane as maintenance issues with the number 17 bus to Upper Holloway. So Sherlock made an attempt to keep Moriarty talking, buying us the time we needed to get everything in place. But Moriarty’s sanity made him unpredictable and something in Sherlock’s disposition must have tipped him off that his success was not guaranteed. Instead he chose to put a hand gun in his mouth and end the game himself rather than give Sherlock even the slightest opportunity to best him."

John nodded. "And me?"

"It had always been part of the plan for you to witness Sherlock’s jump, if necessary. Your reaction would lend authenticity to the ruse. The traffic lights had been timed just so to put you back on Giltspur at the proper moment. But you showed up and we still weren’t ready. His landing wasn’t in place and so Sherlock took the opportunity as it presented itself and tried to buy us time."

"His phone call," John choked on the words as the pieces of the story started to weave something coherent in his mind. _Deduction,_ he thought bitterly, even as Mycroft’s tale told itself.

"Yes. His _note_ , as I believe he called it, was a bid to stall. To give my team time to move the bus out of the way and ensure his safe landing, but then something caught his attention. I don't know what it was but something happened during that conversation that led Sherlock to believe that his time had run out. So he jumped."

It hurt. It stabbed to the core like a bullet or a piece of shrapnel from an IED or some other godforsaken tool of destruction, and John fisted his fingers into the fabric of his jacket as if it was the only thing holding him together. "Sherlock did all this, just to keep us safe?" he asked, grateful that his voice sounded more stable than he felt.

Mycroft squared his shoulders and tucked his chin. “Yes.”

Something indefinable, a bit like pride, but wrapped in a blanket of remorse, flapped uncomfortably in his chest. “And are we? Mrs. Hudson and Lestrade… are they safe?”

"The threat has been neutralized, if that’s what you’re asking,” Mycroft replied evenly.

“So they’re dead.” When Mycroft hesitated, John pushed. “Well, come on then! You brought me here. After everything that’s happened, I think I deserve to know.”

Mycroft shifted in his chair. He seemed to be debating just how much John was entitled to know. “We’ve apprehended the last two of the assassins who had located onto Baker Street. Mrs. Hudson has been able to positively identify the man who claimed to be performing checks for the Electrical Safety Council. He had very legitimate papers, courtesy of Moriarty, I’m sure. There was no way for her to have known. He has been incarcerated pending investigations into other activities both within Britain and abroad. He’ll most likely be turned over to the appropriate authorities of another nation where his crimes have been more successful. The woman, later identified as Nikola Vlasik, was injured when agents attempted to apprehend her inside the basement flat at Baker Street. Her wounds later proved fatal. Photographs and notes in her possession lead me to believe that she was assigned to you, John. There was also a young constable at New Scotland Yard with a mysteriously transparent dossier. He was most cooperative once he realized how few options were left to him. He will live out a comfortable existence amongst the thieves and murderers that Detective Inspector Lestrade puts behind bars."

John found himself nodding numbly. He felt a bit of detached relief that the criminals who contributed to Sherlock’s death would never victimize anyone else, but the damage had already been done. Finally, he blew out a tight breath. “Well… good, then. That’s good. Right. Tied up neatly. I’m sure Sherlock would have been satisfied with that.”

The last bit came out in a tone that John hadn’t even expected from himself, and if the way Mycroft leaned back away from him was a clue, it burned almost as much on the receiving end.

Mycroft sat up straighter, smoothing his coat out of habit. "It is of vital importance that you understand, John.”

“Understand _what_?” John snarled. “Why are you telling me this now?”

Mycroft looked at him with something like pity, which only made John’s jaw clench angrily. “You have to understand why Sherlock did this before we can try to fix it."

"There's nothing left to fix, Mycroft." John shook his head, then closed his eyes for a moment, forcing himself to calm down before facing him again. "You did a good job cleaning up after Moriarty and don’t think I don’t appreciate that, but it doesn’t matter to me anymore because it’s over. _The game_ is over for me, Mycroft. Sherlock's dead."

"No John," Mycroft said softly, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. "He's not."

It was like a great wave rose up out of the ocean and swallowed John whole. There was the rushing sound in his ears and a crushing pressure made it impossible to breathe. The turmoil of anger and bitterness were gone, consumed by something much larger but unidentifiable as he felt his whole body collapse in upon itself. John was just glad he was sitting and even gladder that he’d turned down the tea. He’d have surely thrown it up by now. “What are you playing at?”

“Sherlock is very much alive and he needs your help now more than ever.”

. . .

John did not end up busting Mycroft’s face, but it was a very near miss. Mycroft’s account at the club would certainly be charged a cleaning fee for the tea service John upended and while the staff had stopped short of throwing John from the building they certainly seemed more than pleased to see him leave. After an exhaustive bout of swearing in both English and Dari, John had demanded that Mycroft take him to see Sherlock. The car returned for them, sans Anthea, and Mycroft let John fume in silence as London began its slow sprawl into larger homes and more space.

“So, where exactly are we going, then?”

“To my home in Wimbledon,” Mycroft answered. The man had his elbow propped up on the inside of the car door and the backs of his fingers resting against his mouth. It was a thinking pose, and John wished he could better appreciate the man’s unease. As it was, John’s mind had been consumed with his own feelings of rage and betrayal. “Sherlock was initially taken to a private hospital for treatment and he remained there for over a week. Once he regained consciousness, however, it was imperative that he be moved someplace more secure. I had Sherlock brought to my home as soon as his condition was deemed stable enough for transport.”

“Was that really a good idea? Taking him out of hospital so soon?”

Mycroft fumed. “Do not think for one second that I did not have my brother’s best interests at heart. I had to consider both the safety and security of his person as well as the integrity of the purpose which led him to sacrifice his own life.” Mycroft collapsed back against the seat and massaged his temples with his hand as if he had a head-ache. “Until I could be certain that the threats made by James Moriarty had been neutralized, I could not risk word getting out that he survived. I ensured that my brother had around-the-clock medical care and whatever therapies he needed. His body healed quickly, but his mind had reached a plateau. We soon realized that while verbal and motor functions had recovered, Sherlock still could not tell us who he was or what had happened.”

“Jesus,” John swore. He knew in his heart that Sherlock would sooner break every bone in his body than risk damaging his mind and yet that was the very thing he had lost. “How much does he remember?”

“My brother could recognize neither name, nor face, nor voice of the people he had known. He could hold a fluent conversation in French and identify the elements of the periodic table but not tell you at which university he had read chemistry.” Mycroft took a deep breath and fixed John with a pained look. “The truly disturbing matter is that Sherlock seems to have lost his ability for deductive reasoning.”

John frowned. “What, he’s just forgotten how to think?”

“No, it seems deeper than that. I worked with Sherlock for months, repeating Father’s techniques, and yet it was like teaching the tone deaf to sing. He could go through the motions but never showed an understanding of the concept.” Mycroft sighed. “He has become _ordinary_ , John. The only consolation I find is that he doesn’t seem to remember being any other way.”

. . .

Sherlock had spent his afternoon in the garden, as had become his habit of late. Two chairs and a small table sat on a brick patio on the south side of the house, boxed in by tall hydrangea. _Hydrangea macrophylla_ , for which the color of its blooms is indicative of soil acidity. Sherlock shuddered to think what kinds of chemicals it would take to keep a lawn quite so unnaturally green but the alkaline nature of those chemicals was indisputable. The flowers on the hydrangea were a lovely shade of pale pink.

Sherlock sipped at his cup of tea – it was perfect, or at least he was told it would be. Steeped just a hint too strong and heavily sweetened with no milk. His brother’s housekeeper, Joan, had admitted to having a folio in the kitchen with a list of every guest the house has seen in her years of service along with notes regarding their preferences should they ever return. She showed him his own entry on the page after the one devoted to his brother. It said that he took both his coffee and tea black with two sugars and noted a brand of chocolate digestive that she’d taken to setting out for him in the afternoons. Joan kindly bought Sherlock a notebook of his own so that he might jot down the things that he’d like to remember about people that he meets.

What the well-meaning member of Mycroft’s domestic staff failed to understand was that remembering new things isn’t really a problem. Sherlock could tell you with alarming detail the color of tie favored by the specialist Mycroft had brought in to oversee his recovery. The fact that he even wore a tie should have been evidence enough that Sherlock was the man’s only patient. That was when Sherlock started to understand that there wasn’t much that this man who introduced himself as his brother couldn’t arrange, should he require it, and that just didn’t seem the kind of thing one would jot down in a notebook.

Ties were apparently both important and very informative, however. Sherlock had been given a printed version of a website with only a moderate amount of the information blacked out for security purposes. The author claimed that one could tell a software designer by their tie. Sherlock wasn’t sure how that was even possible and that seemed to upset Mycroft quite a lot.

So instead of writing things he needed to remember in his notebook, Sherlock just doodled, which appeared to alarm his brother more so than their discussions about ties. Sherlock had refused to share the contents of his notebook with Mycroft and had even taken to sleeping with it tucked inside his pillow case. He couldn’t tell you why his brother’s inquiries made him feel defensive and paranoid, but then, he couldn’t tell you the why about a lot of things. Sherlock wasn’t sure how interesting sketches of empty shelves in otherwise empty rooms could be. Perhaps he should start sketching the local flora instead - documenting what he knew of it.

What he did know turned out to be a considerable amount. Sherlock could start with the coniferous trees which blocked the view of the nearest neighbors. _Taxus baccata;_ the English Yew. The Llangernyw yew in North Wales was one of the oldest living trees in the world, and while this copse was likely older than the house, he wouldn’t place them before the fourteenth century. Sherlock knew the foliage of the tree contained the alkaloid toxin taxane, and the lethal dose in horses was between 200–400 mg/kg body weight. He didn’t know why he knew this, but he found it vaguely disconcerting that Mycroft seemed to think that there was a horse trainer in Dartmoor who was glad that he did.

It turned out Sherlock knew the names of all the plants on the grounds of his brother’s estate. However, while he knew their names, he didn't know how he knew them or at what point they were learned. _Retrograde amnesia_ was what the specialist had said. Sherlock was suffering from the loss of pre-existing memories to conscious recollection. Whether or not those memories would ever be accessible was yet to be seen.

“Sherlock,” Mycroft interrupted his thoughts. “I’ve brought someone by to speak with you.”

“Another specialist?” He made no effort to hide his annoyance at the established pattern. “And here I was so looking forward to rotting away on the patio for the remainder of the afternoon.”

“A colleague of mine.” Mycroft cleared his throat. “An old friend, really. Doctor John Watson.”

. . .

John watched silently trying to hold himself in check as Sherlock - _Fucking hell, it really was him_ \- turned a lazy glance back over his shoulder at his brother.

“Did you finally cave and hire a hypnotist, then?” Sherlock drawled in lazy annoyance. “I know how much you were looking forward to that stage of desperation.”

It was his voice, and almost his tone, _Christ,_ , John had missed the sound of his voice. But something still felt horribly wrong. It wasn’t until Sherlock’s gaze had trailed over to John – tracking from his face to his shirt to his feet and then back to Mycroft that John was able to place it. _He doesn’t recognize me!_ And despite all that John had tried to prepare himself in the long ride out here, that _hurt_.

Mycroft opened his mouth to chastise his brother but John pulled himself together quickly to intercede. “I’ve extensive experience in trauma services, though I practice as a GP now,” John answered, somehow finding his voice steady despite the turmoil running under the surface. “I don’t think I’d generally put my trust in hypnosis. Proper load of bollocks, that.”

Sherlock’s left eyebrow twitched upwards and his nostrils flared. “And what do you _generally_ do to treat retrograde amnesia, Doctor Watson?”

Mycroft rescued John from his brother’s ire. “I was hoping that Doctor Watson’s somewhat unique experience regarding the situation might prove useful. I know how you must loathe the indignancy of repeating this process with one professional after another, but do try to give the good doctor your attention for an afternoon. He’s only trying to help.”

Sherlock rolled his eyes with a muttered, “Fine,” as he turned back to the garden but he didn’t make any further protest. Mycroft gave a nod to the second chair set next to the small table before quietly taking his leave. John took the opportunity to close his eyes and breathe deeply, trying to regain some sense of equilibrium in an otherwise unreal situation. When he opened his eyes, Sherlock was pointedly ignoring him.

_Well,_ he thought. _Some things never change._

John took a few minutes to just absorb it all. He’d already had himself a bit of a panic back at Mycroft’s club. The man had scowled as John tossed back three fingers of what was probably a ridiculously expensive scotch without bothering to appreciate the flavor. It was medicinal, in John’s eyes, and therefore unnecessary to savor.

“So,” John began awkwardly. “Lovely weather we’re having, yeah?”

Sherlock shrugged but made no comment. John took a seat and clasped his hands in his lap, resisting the urge to reach out and touch his friend and prove that he was real.

"It’s nice, getting to sit outside without a jacket. That’s a nice jumper you got on. It looks warm.”

"Why must everyone comment on my jumper?" Sherlock asked defensively, wrapping his arms around his torso, practically clinging to the garment as though it might be taken away from him.

That was… interesting. John kept his expression schooled into the closest thing to neutrality he could manage. "Who comments on your jumper?" 

"Mycroft actually _sneered_ at me the first time I wore it, although I suppose he’d be the only person to have known me well enough to know that it didn’t fit my usual tastes.”

“You don’t get a lot of visitors, I suppose.”

"No, I don’t." Sherlock swallowed and looked back out over the garden. “Some of the doctors insisted that I might recover faster if I was around familiar faces but my brother disagreed. As soon as my condition had stabilized he arranged for me to come here. You're not the first specialist that my brother has brought out here, Doctor Watson."

"I’m aware of that. Although I'm sure you required quite a bit of therapy to recover from your injuries."

“Most of the injuries could be managed with nursing care and a physical therapist. Three broken ribs and a broken arm on my right side.” Sherlock ran his fingers through his hair behind his right ear and John could see the uneven hair growth indicating significant scaring. “Scalp laceration, dislocated shoulder. They say I was rather lucky. I apparently took quite a fall and it was a miracle I’d survived at all.”

“Yeah. Quite the miracle.” John followed Sherlock’s gaze out over the immaculate and unnaturally green yard as he struggled not to picture Sherlock lying on the ground, a pool of dark blood growing under his broken body. He looked back at the side of Sherlock’s face and could just make out the faint lines of scaring on his right temple that made his hair lay awkwardly without some product to tame it. Sherlock’s hair was shorter than John remembered him wearing it. John figured it must have been cut to match the length of the parts that had been shaven around his injuries. “You make it all sound remarkably superficial. What was it that caused the amnesia? “ 

“You mean to tell me that you weren’t given a full briefing on my medical status?” John shook his head and Sherlock sighed. “Fine then. If you must know, I developed a significant intracranial bleed. Surgery to relieve the pressure was too little, too late and I was apparently in a coma for six days.

“Not too little, no.” John cleared his throat. “Too little and you’d have been dead. This - this can be managed.”

With surprising speed, Sherlock suddenly pivoted in his chair and leveled a glare at John. Irritation, disdain… something almost like contempt written across his previously placid features. “How does one _manage_ amnesia, Doctor Watson? There’s no pill you can prescribe and no therapy that my brother hasn’t tried. What makes you think you can succeed where so many others have failed?”

_He’s not mad at ME,_ John reminded himself. _He’s just frustrated with the situation and rightfully so._ “Well, the way I see it, things will either come back to you or they won’t. Nothing I do is going to change that.” John sat forward in his chair, giving Sherlock the most earnest expression he could manage. “I can’t force your brain to fix this and I can’t trick it. The best I can do is support you in any way that I can for as long as it takes for that brilliant mind of yours to sort itself out.”

Sherlock seemed taken aback at John’s radical declaration. “And what if this never _sorts itself out?_ What if I never get those years back? What do I do with myself then?”

“Well, there’s no point getting worked up over what is and isn’t coming back to you. You might be missing a bit but there’s an entire lifetime laid out ahead of you. Best be getting on with it.”

“Hmm. You know, I think that’s what she was going for.”

“Who’s that?” John asked. 

“Mycroft called her my ‘ _retail therapist_ ’. She focused on helping me create the ‘new me’ as a way of rediscovering myself. It was never clear if she thought that by determining that I favor raspberry jam I’d somehow remember why. Perhaps she was just helping me build myself into someone new.” His voice was just a bit blithe and dismissive. Christ, he almost sounded the way he had before.

“I rather like raspberry jam myself.”

“Mycroft was certainly not impressed. He felt the approach was a bit too ‘new age’ and perhaps taking advantage of a considerable expense account. She had brought all these catalogues and had me select a new wardrobe. Told me to pick what made me feel comfortable."

"And you chose this jumper." John snickered at the thought of Sherlock finding comfort in an oatmeal-coloured cable knit.

Sherlock smirked. "I chose four of them, in different colors, of course. Mycroft seemed scandalized in a way that makes me think that perhaps the love of a good jumper is a new trait for me."

John smiled sadly. "I see."

Sherlock absently stroked the soft sleeves. "That exercise focused on developing tastes and preferences that fit now instead of trying to force myself into unfamiliar ones. She didn't last very long. Mycroft was livid. I don't see why, though."

Sherlock would have needed new clothes. John was sure that none of his things had been taken from the flat and Sherlock had even gained a bit of weight during his convalescence. John had noticed right away but didn't know how to say it without letting it slip just how well he knew him. "They’re feeding you up then, yeah?"

"Three square meals a day. Same as Wandsworth."

"The prison?"

"The what?"

" Wandsworth. Like the prison?"

Sherlock looked unsure. It was a terrible look on him. "I don't know." He met John's gaze with uncertain eyes. "Did that not make sense?"

"No," John hurried to reassure him. "No, it made perfect sense. They've probably got you on a pretty regular schedule around here." John looked down at his clasped hands and smiled, but it was sad. "Prisons run on a set schedule, too. I think you were comparing your stay here to being in a prison.”

Sherlock blinked a couple of times. “I did not specifically recall that Wandsworth was a prison, and yet I made the comparison. How peculiar.”

John sighed, trying to smile, but finding himself caught between the forced smile and the heat threatening to well up in his eyes. His throat felt just a little bit tight as he replied, “Yeah… peculiar.”

Sherlock’s eyebrows furrowed. “You look sad. Why does that make you sad?”

“Why am I sad?” John asked, incredulous at finding himself once again explaining sentiment to Sherlock Holmes. Fuck Mycroft and his tactical approach to Sherlock’s therapy. If Sherlock deserved honesty from anyone it was John. “My… my be-” John swallowed hard and look away.

Sherlock sat up, suddenly alert and, for the first time, truly interested in the conversation. “Doctor Watson, do you know me?”

“Yeah,” John smiled fondly, taking a deep breath before meeting Sherlock’s penetrating gaze. The look was good on him. “You were my best friend.”

. . .

John felt like they’d had a productive afternoon, not talking about anything of consequence but talking lots all the same. Sherlock had latched onto a conversation companion who didn’t seem to have any expectations of him beyond just conversing. John didn’t ask him what he remembered or quiz him about ink smudges and loose buttons. John just took everything as it came and tried to act naturally as best as he could with an internal buzz of _Dear God, he’s alive! Holy shit! Oh my God!_ constantly running inside his head.

However, it had become obvious that Sherlock was unaccustomed to so much conversation as his voice grew rough and he soon grew exhausted. The sun was dipping low in the west by the time Joan came out to announce both that Sherlock’s dinner was served and that a car was waiting out front to take Doctor Watson home. Loathe as he was to leave his friend behind John could take a hint when it was so freely given. He stood, slipping his jacket back on and relieving his cup of the rest of his tea.

“John?”

“Yes?”

“Would you return? Perhaps join me for lunch. Tomorrow, even, if it would be convenient.”

_If inconvenient, come anyway,_ John thought and smiled at the memory. “That would be lovely, actually. I can’t imagine any place I’d rather be.”

Sherlock returned a reserved but honest smile and stood, extending his hand awkwardly and saying ‘thank you’ in a manner which reminded John of a young boy mimicking the polite interactions of their father. As though it was something that he knew he was _supposed_ to do and therefore he did, all the while expecting feedback on his actions. John’s mind raced through images of those hands working to undo a vest loaded with Semtex and trembling with a tumbler of scotch and he found he had to swallow twice to dislodge the lump forming in his throat.

He grasped the proffered hand in both of his own and simply said, “You’re welcome.”

. . .

John didn’t realize how awkward the secret would be to keep until he let himself in the front door and came face-to-face with Mrs. Hudson.

“You’re looking awful chipper today, Doctor Watson. Have you got yourself a date tonight?”

“No,” he shook his head, smiling. “No, nothing like that. I’ve just had a good day is all.”

“Well, whatever it is, it’s good to see you happy. It’s feels like it’s so seldom that I see you smile like you really mean it.”

“Well,” he tried. “It’s been a rough year, I’ll admit, but I finally feel like things are coming together.”

“That’s wonderful, dear. I’m so pleased.” John hung up his jacket and turned to go up but only made it to the first step before she stopped him. “Now don’t forget that I’m leaving for my sister’s tomorrow. Are you sure you don’t mind looking after the place for me while I’m gone?”

“No, of course not, Mrs. Hudson. It’s no bother at all. I know you said they weren’t planning on replacing the knee. Remind me again of how long you think you’ll be gone?”

“Just until she’s out of the full brace and can bend her knee again. Shouldn’t be more than a couple of weeks –three, at the most.” She patted his cheek. “You’re such a dear. You always take such good care of me.” She sighed, a thoughtful expression on her face. “I am so glad you decided to stay on, John. I can’t imagine anyone else living upstairs.”

“It’s the least I can do after all you’ve done for me. Especially lately. I’m glad to help out.”

She smiled fondly at him and with a tight nod John turned and went up to 221B alone. Sleep didn’t come for John that night and he paced the flat into the early hours of the morning, making tea and then carrying the cup around the flat until it had grown tepid. He repeated the process twice over before he abandoned the idea all together. He certainly didn’t need the caffeine to stay awake even though he’d long since abandoned the notion of getting any sleep. At a loss as to what he should do next, John set out a duffle to pack a few of Sherlock’s things for him, but John couldn’t decide where to start.

Mycroft had warned John off of any ‘ _overt displays of emotion or tearful reunions_ ’ – anything too personal – with significant disdain. He said that immersion techniques had been tried already and that Sherlock had not responded well to them, although he annoyingly refused to elaborate. It had been at Mycroft’s insistence that John ease his way back into Sherlock’s life gently. _Start slowly, John. Spend a few afternoons with him in my home and see how he progresses. It’s not safe for him to return to Baker Street just yet. He’s vulnerable,_ Mycroft had insisted. _Give it time._

Well, time was something John had in abundance. Oh, he still took the occasional bit of locum work at the surgery – he never was good at saying no when Sarah needed a hand – but it had become more of something he did when he needed to be around people and not out of financial necessity. John had been astounded when a little over a week after Sherlock’s death one of the family’s solicitors had stopped by the flat with a copy of Sherlock’s will and the paperwork for John to sign, thereby turning over Sherlock’s personal accounts to him. The will was quite elaborate and John was certain Sherlock had probably never read the thing – it had Mycroft’s meddling stink all over it – but the solicitor had been kind enough to break it down for him as thus: Sherlock’s trust fund and any of the money or possessions which he’d inherited were to go to Mycroft as his closest living relative, but under that paragraph had been written in Sherlock’s tidy scrawl: _give everything else to John - SH_. As such, any income and personal items that Sherlock had earned in his adult life would belong to John for him to do with them as he saw fit. 

It had made his eyes burn but John had signed the documents where indicated and the solicitor left him an envelope detailing account numbers and balances and said that anything of Sherlock’s left in the flat was now his. John had in no way become a wealthy man that day but the gesture had allowed him to take some much needed time off to mourn in private, while the furor over Sherlock had a chance to die down. He’d briefly toyed with the idea of clearing out some of Sherlock’s belongings and he did straighten the flat up a bit, but the place was like a scrapbook of Sherlock’s career. Every bit of detritus that John picked up there was another memory of Sherlock and the man that he’d been. In the end, John had changed almost nothing. 

John looked at these things now, items that he’d spent the last year keeping to remind himself of the man Sherlock Holmes had been and John wondered which of them could do the same thing for Sherlock. How do you sum up someone’s life in the items that fit in a duffel bag? Well, someone other than John, whose bedroom upstairs still held very little of personal value. A box of military uniforms and awards that had only been opened once since his discharge and not by him (Sherlock said he needed a periscope of all things but John was certain it was just a lame excuse for a good snoop). Everything of sentiment resided downstairs now, in the space that was theirs. Mrs. Hudson had been kind enough to wash all of his lab glassware and take the microscope and dissection supplies down to the local secondary school which made the kitchen functional again, but she’d left the bedroom to John. John had gone into Sherlock’s bedroom that first week and emptied the waste basket and rescued a plate of half eaten toast. He made the bed and hung Sherlock’s dry cleaning in the closet, but as with the rest of the flat, John found that he just couldn’t get rid of Sherlock’s things. So he’d closed the door and left the room alone for the better part of a year now.

John stood in the room now surveying Sherlock’s possessions and he found his task overwhelming. Sitting on the end of the bed, John considered the things left behind. Test tube racks and insects in a glass case. There were souvenirs _It’s EVIDENCE, John_ from cases like the harpoon and a white plaster bust of Napoleon. Then there were items of a more personal significance – his judo certificate and a framed picture of Dimitri Mendeleev. John was starting to see how forcing Sherlock into this space could be difficult for him, but he wondered if that would only be true if it worked. And if it worked, wouldn’t it all be worth it? John wondered what it was like in Sherlock’s head now. The man had once compared his mind to a racing engine but that engine had idled, losing the fuel that had once... 

“Oh god,” John groaned, curling up on his side and pulling his feet onto the bed. His metaphors were running away with him. If he could just slow his spinning thoughts long enough to get some rest. Was this what Sherlock felt like when his mind ran out of control? Was the cocaine what he did to focus his spinning thoughts or make them stop? John grabbed one of the pillows and hugged it to his chest and finally allowed the emotional upheaval of the day overwhelm him.

. . .

Late the following morning John carried Mrs. Hudson’s bags down to the curb and handed them off to the driver to load into the cab.

“Now, don’t forget to water the fern at least twice a week. It’s a fickle thing, it is. Will shed those tiny leaves it has all over the carpets if you let it dry, so do take care with it.”

“I will, Mrs. Hudson. Don’t you worry about a thing.”

She grabbed John in a surprisingly strong embrace for a woman her age. “Try to stay busy, John. It helps.” And with that Mrs. Hudson released him and eased herself into the back of the cab. John waved as the car pulled away and went back inside, bounding up the stairs to retrieve the items he was taking to Sherlock. Mycroft had texted earlier saying that a car was being sent for him at eleven and that gave John an hour of double- and triple-checking the items he’d finally chosen to bring with him.

John had gone with a simple selection. He’d packed Sherlock’s blue dressing gown (in case he needed to have a good strop) as well as one of his scarves. For laughs, he had thrown in the deerstalker that the lads down at the Yard had got him. There were also a few copies of the Journal of Forensic Science which had arrived in recent months, and his pocket magnifying glass. In the end, John decided against bringing out the violin just yet but did decide at the last minute to pack the skull, carefully wrapped in newsprint and placed in a hat box. John had drawn the line at taking the flat sheet off of Sherlock’s bed, but the thought of Sherlock traipsing about his brother’s home in nothing but a bed sheet gave him a good laugh.

John was watching from the window when, at exactly eleven o’clock, yet another non-descript black car pulled up to the curb and waited. John threw on his jacket and carefully picked up Sherlock’s duffel. John walked with purpose and for once the first thing he did upon stepping out his door was not survey the street and its occupants. That was a mistake.

If John had been paying attention he might have recognized the man sitting at the corner table at Speedy’s, drinking coffee and watching John with interest. Adam Worth was nothing if not patient and he considered himself quite personally invested in what turned out to be his final assignment from the late Jim Moriarty. Business had cooled off a bit after the chief’s death, but Worth’s assignment hadn’t changed: keep an eye on the place and let the boss know what’s going on. He was terribly bored, but the pay was pretty decent for someone who spent most of his time smoking and drinking coffee. 

At first he was giving near hourly reports with so much going on. Worth had even been the one to keep an eye out when the boss had needed to stop in and wasn’t that a privilege. But then things had come to a head and his job had suddenly turned painfully dull. But if there was one thing he’d learned, it was that the payout for paying attention at just the right time could be huge. So Worth had watched and he waited, day after day for over a year now. And when he sat at the open window of his flat down the street last night, having a smoke, his interest had been piqued at the changes he was seeing in his target. A man who once walked slowly and with obvious discomfort had alighted from a sleek black sedan and strode purposefully inside. Worth was watching again this morning when his target had strode out the front door with a bag in each hand and yet still had an elbow to offer the land lady to help her down the stairs. His interest being so captured, Worth had decided to take a bit of a risk and went over to the café next door for a cup of coffee to keep a closer eye on things.

His risk had been rewarded. Not an hour later the target emerged from 221 and climbed into yet another non-descript black car with a leather duffel too posh to belong to a simple man such as himself. The limp appeared to be gone. 

Worth took out his mobile and hit number one on speed dial. “Eh, it’s Worth. Let me talk to the Colonel. Yeah, dun fuck wit me Malcolm. I gots sumin’ the boss’ll wanna hear.”

. . .

When John arrived at Mycroft’s house he let his jacket be hung up in the coat closet, but carried Sherlock’s things with him as he was shown to the study. The room had the standard look of something a man like Mycroft would consider proper and respectable and not at all to John’s own tastes. The furniture was obviously expensive and designed more for perching than lounging. The large windows let in a considerable amount of light and deep mahogany shelves dominated the rest of the walls.

John found Sherlock sitting in a plush leather chair by the window with a book on apiology open in his lap and his fingers steepled in front of his mouth. His eyes flew open when John cleared his throat. “John,” he blurted with a decidedly undignified start, jumping out of his chair and letting his book fall forgotten to the floor. “You came back!”

“Well of course I came back. I said I would, didn’t I?”

“Yes, well, plans have a tendency to change around here when Mycroft’s gotten involved. I wasn’t entirely sure that our conversation yesterday fit within his expectations of my recovery.”

“Well sod Mycroft and sod his ridiculous expectations.” John felt a flush of familiarity and hope when Sherlock smirked at his disregard for his brother’s meddling nature. He gave Sherlock a tentative smile in return. “I actually brought a few things back with me from Baker Street.” When John took the skull out of its box Sherlock raised his eyebrow at him, to which John replied, “An old friend.”

Now Sherlock raised both eyebrows at him and John couldn’t help but take the piss. “And when I say friend…” he trailed off.

Sherlock laughed, open and full bellied and with a look on his face like he was surprised he knew how. “You are a strange man, John Watson.”

“Well, certainly beats being normal.”

“Indeed it does. Now let us see what Joan has put together for us for lunch.”

. . .

Lunch was good, but the company was exquisite and John came back for lunch every day that week. They’d spent their afternoons in quiet conversation either in the lounge or wandering the back garden. John told stories about his time in the Army – amusing bits about temperamental patients and taking down mouthy soldiers who were a head again taller than himself. After Sherlock soundly beat John at their third game of chess, they retired to the study where Sherlock took the opportunity to show off the extensive library he’d spent much of the last year working his way through.

“‘The Art of Ta'liq’,” John frowned. “Why am I not surprised that your brother’s library contains a book on the aesthetic appreciation of Medieval torture methods?”

“Hmm, it does seem to be a sub-specialty of his. I’ve searched the house for a dungeon but the walls have all been disappointingly unyielding.”

John chuckled. “No secret passages then,” he said, sliding the book back onto the shelf next to a collective of the ethnographic photography of Enrico Martino. “That’s a bit disappointing.”

“It is.” Sherlock bit his lip and pondered the atlas of the Roman Empire in his hands. “You said that until you saw me in person, you believed that I was dead, as does most everyone that I once knew.”

“Yes,” John said. He appreciated that the conversation needed to cover this sort of thing but even having Sherlock in front of him could only do so much to lessen the pain. “As your next of kin it was Mycroft who was called in to identify your body and it was a closed casket funeral. Actually, now that I think of it, I wonder what they put in that thing to weigh it down. God, I hope was just sand bags. It’s one thing to think I spent months talking to an empty grave, but it would have been just downright creepy if your brother had slipped a John Doe in there while no one was looking.”

“Humph.” Sherlock tossed the atlas onto the desk and looked back at John. “Well he certainly kept the farce up long enough. But what I don’t understand is his reasoning for waiting until now to bring you out here? We lived together for a year and a half; surely it must have crossed his mind to have brought you out here before now.”

“Mycroft’s got a bad case of big brother syndrome. He seems to think he can fix anything and he likes to have things done his own way. Perhaps he thought that by keeping you out of London proper that once you’d recovered he could tempt you with some of his own projects. It’s no secret that Mycroft’s always had it in his head that you should be working for him. I used to think that having me around made you a bit more comfortable in exerting your independence from Mycroft. He probably held off on bringing me out here as long as he could. I think I’m his last resort.”

Sherlock harrumphed but did not disagree.

“They’ve tried all of the usual fixes for this, I assume?”

“Of course.”

“Psychotherapy?”

“Yes.”

“And?”

“Boring.”

John couldn’t have stopped his bark of laughter if he’d tried. Which he didn’t.

“Why are you laughing?”

“It’s just – Jesus, Sherlock. That is the most _you_ thing that I’ve heard you say yet.”

“Really? Interesting. In what way is a single word more _me_?”

“You just,” John rubbed at his eyes then went to the sit in the one of the chairs, waiting for Sherlock to join him before he continued. “You were always a bit manic, in a way. You’d get a case and there’d be no stopping you. For days on end you wouldn’t sleep, would barely eat. The army and medical school trained me for that kind of thing and I still couldn’t keep up with you half of the time. But then at other times you’d get what you called one of your ‘black moods.’ You’d just sprawl out on the sofa and whine on about how bored you were.”

“That would certainly encompass my stay here, although the only sofa long enough for me to lie on is in Mycroft’s office and if I spend another moment in that suffocating space I’m likely to start shooting the walls.”

“I take it that’s where Mycroft sat you down for your lessons?”

“Yes. He seemed infinitely frustrated that I could not make these asinine leaps of logic. Everything would make perfect sense once he’d taken the time to explain it to me but the fact remained that without knowing what I was looking for I just could not make that connection”

“You see but you didn’t observe,” John mused.

Sherlock grimaced. “Almost the precise terminology that Mycroft used.” He shook his head agitatedly. “How my brother expected any normal person to make those connections was beyond me.”

“Well, you’d never exactly been normal, Sherlock. Your mind was extraordinary, the things you could put together. The cases you’d solve.” John blew out his breath. “It was truly amazing. Us mortals could never hope to compare.”

Sherlock was quiet for a moment. When he spoke, his tone was more subdued. “What if that never comes back, John? Am I doomed to live an ordinary life? What purpose is there in living when everything I was ever good at has been taken away from me?”

“You sound just like I did after I was invalided out of Afghanistan, and I found my purpose again,” John replied firmly, refusing to let Sherlock, or himself, go down that line of thinking.

“That’s right,” Sherlock nodded. “You were a soldier. Shot in the leg, yes?”

“Nope,” John tapped his left shoulder. “But that was a good catch with the limp the other day. Not an unreasonable assumption.”

“Psychosomatic, then. I thought I’d noticed an improvement in your gait. We are quite the pair. Each of us with our issues.”

“You make for good company. I can’t complain.”

“Yes. I find your visits have rapidly become the highlight of my stay here. I do hope it’s not too much to ask that you might continue them.”

“You know, sod this having to drive all the way out to Wimbledon every day. I see no reason why you couldn’t move back into your room on Baker Street.”

Sherlock stared at him. “I don’t know. I mean, John, what would I do?”

“Whatever you’d like. You’ve spent enough time reading Mycroft’s books, perhaps you’d find it helpful to go back to reading some of your own.”

“But what if it doesn’t? Help, that is. What if I never get better?”

“You’re smart, smarter than most and that is with a brain injury trying to slow you down. I’m sure you’ll come up with something.”

“And if I don’t?”

John leaned forward, fixing Sherlock with a penetrating gaze. “There is nothing wrong with you, Sherlock. If this is it, if you never get back anything more than what you have right now, I will still count myself lucky to be your friend.”

Sherlock, for once, seemed speechless. His mouth hung open for just a second too long before he finally seemed to gather himself together, displaying an emotion that was both foreign on those features, and yet, seemed so incredibly right. “John Watson, you are an extraordinary human being. I believe I am the privileged one here.”

John flushed and looked away. Praise from Sherlock was a rare enough thing, but this? John cleared his throat and stood up. “Well then. Let’s get you packed and get out of here before the warden gets back.”

Sherlock beamed up at him. “Indeed.”

. . .

Within the hour Sherlock had packed his newly acquired wardrobe and a few meager belongings and he and John were on the A219 and heading back into the heart of London. John had chosen to call for a cab rather than wait for Mycroft’s driver to return lest he bring the elder Holmes back with him. John would bet money that Mycroft already knew that he’d taken Sherlock out of the house and could have easily had them stopped had he so desired. Facing an unimpeded drive home seemed tantamount to having permission although John did feel a little like they were sneaking out after curfew.

Once the initial fit of giggles had passed Sherlock had grown quiet and took to staring out the window as the city rolled by.

“Did you ever leave that house?”

“Sometimes,” Sherlock had replied without turning. “There were some appointments which could not be conducted in the home. MRIs and the like which required me to travel to the clinic. But those were always direct trips to and from with no other stops. Mycroft had been adamant that it wasn’t safe.”

“Do you think that’s the result of some threat to you personally or is he more worried about the potential downfall that news of your survival would cause?”

“I’m not sure. My brother has been remarkably tight lipped on the subject. I feel like I’ve lived much of the last year in a holding pattern waiting for some as yet undefined shoe to drop.”

“Hmph.” John let the topic drop and looked out his own window but his silence did not last long. “I don’t want to pull you from one cage just to put you in another, Sherlock. You are your own man and I won’t force you to stay inside the flat if you don’t want to.”

“Until I’ve regained some understanding of my surroundings it’s probably for the best.” Sherlock sighed and turned away from the window to face John. “Although I do appreciate the sentiment.”

“Does any of this seem even the slightest bit familiar to you? It’s just that you used to know London so well. It was like you had a map of the city imprinted on your brain – you seemed to know every street and shop, and over a dozen places to get a free meal.” 

“Were these free meals from restaurants or people’s homes?”

John shrugged. “A little of both, really. You helped a lot of people, Sherlock. You’ve saved lives and stopped killers. You found lost heirlooms and kidnapped children. There are so many people out there that are so grateful for what you did for them that this was the only way they knew how to repay you.”

“How is it that Mycroft never thought to tell me about any of this?” Sherlock asked, seeming authentically boggled, and simultaneously annoyed as hell.

“Well, I suppose he’s always thought that being a consulting detective was a bit beneath you.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Your brother’s a bit of a stuck up git if you hadn’t noticed.”

Sherlock laughed out loud. “Yes. I’d begun to pick up on that.”

“Mycroft was always getting on your case to do something more with that brain of yours but you were never in it for the reward. Hell, you didn’t even charge people half the time. Money or fame never seemed all that important to you. For you it was all about the process.”

“Hmm,” Sherlock took a minute to digest all of this. “What was it that you said I did before? Some sort of detective.”

“ _Consulting_ detective,” John corrected. “The only one in the world. You invented the job.”

“Well that was awfully ambitious of me.” His smile dimmed and Sherlock turned back to the window. “Perhaps Mycroft was right to keep this from me. How could I ever expect to live up to that sort of precedent?”

John put a hand on Sherlock’s arm and squeezed gently. “You’ll figure something out. I have absolute faith in you.”

“I’m glad someone does.”

Sherlock didn’t shrug him off and so it took John an embarrassingly long time to realize that he was still touching his arm. At that point John couldn’t find a way to move it without making the situation more awkward and so he just kept his hand there until their cab turned onto Baker Street.

. . .

If Mycroft Holmes had truly been concerned about his brother’s welfare, he should have considered buying off Mr. Chatterjee. The man had access to a wealth of information on the goings on at 221 Baker Street. Sebastian Moran certainly didn’t overlook this fact and it was one of the first things that he saw to when he stepped into the absence left by his former employer.

“Refresh your cuppa, sir?” Moran looked up from his article on hunting big game in Nunavut to see the café’s owner standing awkwardly with a fresh carafe. Moran was delighted to note the way the man’s hands shook ever so slightly.

Moran placed his hand over his empty cup and said, “I’m good, thank you.” 

Chatterjee nodded and quickly made his way back behind the perceived safety of the front counter.

Yes, this had been a very wise investment, indeed.

A moment later his attention was diverted as a cab pulled up to the curb outside the café. The target climbed out and left the door open as he went up to the driver’s window to pay. Then he turned and held out his hand as none other than Sherlock _bloody_ Holmes climbed out, handing one of his bags to Watson and following the man up the steps to 221.

Moran smiled. "Oh, Captain Watson, you shouldn’t have. It’s not even my birthday."

. . .

John did his best to remain neutral as he led Sherlock up the stairs to 221B. He hid a smile when Sherlock instinctively skipped the third stair that tended to creak and instead carried the duffel bag up and put it down just inside the door at the top of the stairs. He turned to see Sherlock’s eyes flittering everywhere, looking around the room as if he were taking mental note of every detail.

“Anything?” John asked.

“No, I don’t think so.” Sherlock sighed and sat down his case. “You would think I would know, but I just can’t say.”

“It’s alright,” John shrugged. “Come on, then. We’ll put your cases in your room and then I could sure use a cup of tea.”

“Alright then,” Sherlock agreed and followed John out and through the kitchen.

“Loo’s on the left,” John indicated with a nod of his head. “And we share that, so try not to leave your pants on the floor. And this,” John opened the door with a flourish, “is your room.”

Sherlock took a moment to look the room over while John stood there biting his lip. “I put on a fresh set of sheets this morning and I made some space in the bureau for the clothes you brought with you. There are towels in a cabinet in the bathroom. I’ve been meaning to go to the store, so if you find you’re missing anything, just let me know.

“Yes. Thank you, John.”

“Did you, ah,” John cleared his throat nervously. “You want some help putting your things away, or…”

“No, that’s alright. I think I can manage.”

“Right. I’ll just leave you to it, then.” John stepped out of the room and pulled the door most of the way closed behind him.

Loath as he was to leave Sherlock alone, John figured that he could probably do with a bit of time to process the changes that the day had brought. If he was honest with himself, John could certainly use a bit of time to adjust as well. He draped his jacket over the back of one of the kitchen chairs and fished his mobile out of the pocket. He had a text from a blocked number that read: _I hope you know what you are doing_ that he assumed was Mycroft and deleted without sending a response.

Setting his mobile aside, John looked around the kitchen for something to do. Making tea had always been his go-to solution for just about everything situation. He was thinking about whether or not he should make a cup for Sherlock as well when he thought, _I’ll need to figure out what I did with his mug_. But then John remembered the fate of Sherlock’s mug. It had been the fourth time in as many days that John had gotten up in the morning and made tea, only to discover that he had made two cups out of habit. In a fit of rage, John had grabbed the cup and thrown it against the wall.

Mrs. Hudson had come running up the stairs as fast as her hip would let her and found John curled up on the floor shaking. Saint that she was, she’d merely fetched a bag of frozen vegetables for the scalding on John’s hand and quietly cleaned up the mess. A fine residue of sugar from the heavily sweetened tea had coated the floor and left it sticky for days.

So no, perhaps not tea, then.

. . .

This was _his_ room, more so than any other place Sherlock could remember being. Mycroft’s home had felt cold and impersonal – much like the homes photographed for the magazines that littered the waiting rooms of hospitals and clinics. Sherlock had stayed in one of the guest rooms because that’s what he was: a long term guest. Nothing in the room held any sentimental value for him. It had been a picturesque representation of the holding pattern that had been his life of late.

But this? This room was a shrine to the life that Sherlock could not remember. He stood in the middle of the room and turned slowly, taking it all in. From the pictures hung on the walls to the books that filled the shelves, everything in this room held some sort of personal significance for him, if only he could recall it. The room looked like it belonged to someone away on holiday, not like it had stood empty for almost a year. A suit jacket still hung on the back of the chair which sat at a desk littered with receipts and notes written on paper napkins. A pair of dress shoes had been kicked off by the door and on top of the bureau was a phone charger still plugged into the wall. The clock on the table by the bed was blinking that it was four twenty-seven in the morning and Sherlock wondered how many months had passed since the last time the breakers had blown.

Sitting down on the bed he stroked a hand on the bedspread and felt… nothing. Presumably he had spent eighteen months lying on these sheets every night. And yet, they were no more or less familiar to him than the coarse hospital blankets under which he had awoken after his accident. Reaching to the head of the bed Sherlock grabbed the - _his_ \- pillow and held it to his chest. He laid his head against it and tried to quiet the storm of thoughts – _napkins, phone, shoes, receipts, jacket, John_ \- that raged in his mind. Sherlock felt as if he were missing something significant and yet could come up with absolutely nothing.

. . .

Eventually, John rose from the table and made an attempt at being productive. He filled the kettle and set it to boil, but pulled down two generic mugs, bypassing his own favored one with the RAMC logo on it in order avoid thinking about Sherlock’s own absent cup. Tea prep achieved, John started pondering their options for supper. Opening the fridge he noted that he really was overdue for a trip to the shops. There was very little in the fridge that wasn’t ageing take away or condiments. They couldn’t really go out for food and John certainly wasn’t going to leave Sherlock here by himself so soon.

“Delivery it is,” John declared and pulled open a drawer full of take away menus to see what looked good. Figuring Sherlock might want his space, John just decided on whatever seemed like the kind of food least likely to be served in Mycroft’s house. On one of his walks John had discovered a lovely Pakistani bakery wedged between a dry cleaners and a video store. John had just happened upon the place on the very day that Mr. Rajput thought he was having a heart attack.

John had offered to help and, with a few targeted questions and a gentle bit of prodding to the costochondral junctions, he was able put the man’s fears to rest. John had refused the offer for a free meal but Mr. Rajput had been insistent. The food turned out to be divine and John’s walks had frequently taken him back to the neighborhood for both the lamb chops and conversation with someone who never asked gave him pitying looks or asked about Sherlock. John had certainly appreciated it when the man’s son, Rana, had offered to deliver. On days when the weather was poor and John’s leg was particularly stiff, Rana was proud to break out his motor bike and “bring Doctor John his kebab.”

Having placed his order for the chicken and vegetables and a beef burger with crispy potatoes, John took his tea to the sitting room to wait for Rana to arrive.

After about twenty minutes John heard the door to Sherlock’s room open and he came out.

“Alright there?” John asked.

“Would you happen to have any paracetamol?”

John frowned in concern. “Are you not feeling well?”

“I’m fine, mostly. It’s just a headache. It happens sometimes. Usually when I’ve spent too much time around Mycroft.”

“Yeah,” John laughed as he pushed himself up out of his chair. “That would certainly do it. Hang on a sec, I’m sure I’ve got some in the cabinet.”

John returned with the bottle and shook out two pills into Sherlock’s waiting hand. “Thank you,” he said before popped the pills in his mouth and swallowed them dry.

“You would tell me if this was something more significant, wouldn’t you?”

“Of course,” Sherlock sighed before sprawling out on the sofa and cupping his hand over his eyes. “Any possible correlation to my injuries has been considered and discarded. They do seem most likely to trouble me on days when I’ve spent considerable energy trying to remember something. I assume the onslaught of new information today to be the most likely cause.”

“Huh. Perhaps all of your memories are just locked away in that mind of yours, banging on the doors to be let out.”

Sherlock moved his wrist enough to be able to glare at John blearily with one eye. “Did you take a special course in medical school to teach you how to sound like an idiot when you talk to patients?”

John smiled. “I stopped being insulted by you calling me an idiot ages ago.”

“Did you often find yourself an idiot in my company?” Sherlock gave him a crocked grin.

“Oh, all the time. But then, most everybody’s an idiot compared to you.” John sobered a bit. “You know, you used to get headaches before. These were on the days when you said that your mind was running in over-drive and you didn’t have a case to focus on.”

“Did anything help?”

“Well, the patches helped a bit since you’d quit smoking. Not that I’m recommending you pick the habit up again. It was good on you for quitting. Addiction is a bitch but you seemed to be doing alright.”

“So I had an addictive personality, then.”

“Oh, yeah. You were off the cigarettes by the time I’d met you, as well as the other stuff.” Sherlock raised an eyebrow but John pretended not to see it. “I suppose you just substituted one addiction for another and by then you’d become pretty hyper-focused on ‘the work.’” 

“So what do I focus on now if not ‘the work’?” Sherlock drew quote marks in the air with his fingers.

John shrugged. “Well, we’ve got a bit of time before dinner gets here so I suppose we could start with a proper tour of the flat.”

“It’s big enough to require a tour?”

“No, not like that. I just thought you might appreciate knowing where to start looking. I didn’t change much and you’re welcome to look through things at your leisure to help you get re-oriented. Although, you never really respected things like boundaries and personal property before so I don’t see why I should expect you to hesitate now.”

Sherlock frowned but didn’t object so John continued. “So really you can feel free to riffle through whatever you come across. All of your case notes have been put in the file cabinet in your bed room, if you care to read them. You’ve already given the sofa a good flop and this chair,” John indicated the unoccupied one across from his own. “Is obviously yours.”

“Obviously?”

“Well,” John grinned at getting to explain a simple deduction to him. “You know that two people lived in this flat. There are two chairs and I’m already sitting in one of them so the one that’s left must be yours.”

“Oh, obviously.” Sherlock waved his hand towards “his” chair. “The indent in the cushions seems a bit large for me. Have you been entertaining while I was away?”

“Well,” John groused. “Your brother has to sit somewhere.”

The two of them were still giggling when Rana knocked on the door with dinner.

. . .

John had been sleeping poorly for most of the week, but that night John found that a belly full of good food and the relief of having Sherlock home made his bed look better than ever. He drifted off easily and enjoyed the rare treat of sleeping through the night. The following morning he came downstairs to find Sherlock already ensconced in his chair. He was flipping through what appeared to be a copy of the police report from a triple homicide in 2006.

“Breakfast?”

“Just tea for me,” Sherlock answered without looking up. “Are the police really this moronic? This file is littered with typos and a flagrant abuse of grammar. It’s no wonder crime is thriving if this is what the criminal element has to contend with.”

John snickered at Sherlock’s complaints as he made himself some toast. “Care to do anything about that?”

Sherlock stood up and came into the kitchen, gesticulating wildly with a hand holding a mug shot of someone who looked a little like a lighter and hairier version of Angelo and John quietly started to put the pieces together while Sherlock talked. “I doubt I’d be of much help. Assuming they solved the case - which by this report it sounds like they had – the culprit would have been apprehended years ago. The evidence is circumstantial at best, but he was identified by the wife of one of the victims. His alibi was pathetic, though, and he has no one to corroborate it. Three victims dead of multiple stab wounds, a brutal homicide like this would have put someone behind bars for life.”

John rested his hands on the back of the kitchen chair and fixed Sherlock with a steady gaze. “What if that man there didn’t do it, though? What if the police got it wrong?”

Sherlock frowned at the man in the picture, and then sat down at the kitchen table to re-read the file. He grunted a sort of acknowledgement when John sat his tea in front of him but otherwise didn’t speak again for the rest of the morning.

. . .

They fell into a comfortable routine after that. Over the course of the next week, John would come down in the mornings to find Sherlock awake and pouring over old cases. He quit asking if Sherlock cared for breakfast and instead took to leaving tea and toast on the desk next to Sherlock’s elbow and retrieving the inevitably empty plate in the evenings when he’d start planning for dinner. John had rediscovered the simple joy of reading a book while Sherlock nattered about to himself. For the first time John wasn’t racing to get to the end before Sherlock spoiled it for him.

Mycroft checked in daily and John had perfected the art of the one word response.

_How is he?_ Fine.

_Settling in?_ Yes.

_Any progress?_ No.

Perhaps that last one wasn’t entirely true but John felt like it was too early to get his hopes up, and didn’t really feel like sharing. Mycroft had kept Sherlock away from him for almost a year and while it was supposedly Sherlock’s idea to do so before he got hurt, that didn’t stop John from petulantly tagging Mycroft with the lion’s share of the blame. Besides, progress was hard to quantify. There were no _Aha!_ moments where Sherlock declared that he remembered something, but John felt that Sherlock was quietly slotting into routines and mannerisms without realizing he’d done so. Calling attention to it just seemed premature and John didn’t want to jinx the situation.

When John sat down to lunch on the eighth day with no new texts from Mycroft, he should have known that something was up but it still surprised him when Mycroft walked into the sitting room.

“I thought I locked the downstairs door.”

“You did,” Mycroft gave him John a smug smile and inquired, “Is my brother in?”

“Shower,” John jerked his head towards the sound of running water in the bathroom. “Perhaps you could come back later and knock on the door properly so I might properly ignore you.”

“Don’t you think that’s a bit petulant, John?” Mycroft unbuttoned his jacket and pulled out the chair across the kitchen table from John sat down. “How is he?”

“Alive. I’m finding it hard to get worked up about the details beyond that.” John shrugged and drained his mug.” Are you still cross with me for breaking him out of his tower?”

“Does that make you his knight in shining armor?” Mycroft groused. “And to think, you didn’t even get to shoot anyone this time.”

Living with Sherlock had taught John how to ignore such obvious bait. “You can’t tell me you didn’t see me bringing him back here as soon as I could.”

“Oh, I was quite certain you would. Although I had rather hoped you would have taken a bit more time of it. Perhaps put forth an effort to make the transition somewhat more gradual.”

“You had him locked away in your house for eleven months and never told him a thing about his life before that wasn’t related to the way he thinks. He seems,” John trailed off as he searched for the right words. “Actually, he seems fine. He keeps busy. Reads a lot. Still makes scathing remarks at people on the telly. If you didn’t know him before, I doubt you’d know anything was wrong.”

“Any headaches?”

“Not since the first day.”

“And has there been any progress with regards to the amnesia?”

John shook his head. “No, but he’s processing new information as fast as ever. The man is like a sponge. He spends almost every waking moment pouring over books and files from his career. He’s pretty quiet most of the time, but he doesn’t seem to be in one of his funks.”

Mycroft smiled sadly. “He sounds much the way he was as a child. Sherlock would lose days curled up on the floor in Father’s library, reading everything he could get his hands on.”

John was thoughtful for a moment. He was unsure of how much he should share, but really, it wasn’t like there was anyone else that he could take to about this. “The thing is, when you compare him to the way he was before, he almost seems – better.”

Mycroft examined John critically for a moment. “Better how?”

“Well, I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a diagnosis of manic depression at some point in his life.” He paused but Mycroft’s stoic expression neither confirmed nor denied what John was saying. “I know my background in psychiatry is limited but I’d be tempted to agree. The funny thing about him now is that Sherlock seems to have found a sort of middle ground. He appears to have left the dramatic highs and lows behind him. It’s like the knock on his head was a cure as much as anything.”

“Keep in mind that those manic highs were what drove Sherlock to greatness. When coupled with a mystery to solve, Sherlock’s brilliance was unparalleled.”

“But on the flip side if he didn’t have a case or one of his bloody experiments to channel his mental energy, he’d tail spin into some pretty spectacular lows. He may have stopped self-medicating with the cocaine but Sherlock’s black moods were still epic and all-consuming. I’ve lived through more than enough of them for one lifetime. If I had to pick, I’m not sure that he’s not better off now than he was before.”

“But you should not have the right to choose, John. We have to ask ourselves what Sherlock would have wanted.”

“He would have wanted the both of you to mind your own damned business.” Mycroft and John both turned to see Sherlock standing in the hall in his dressing gown. John was amazed by how different he looked with his hair wet and slicked back. There was water pooling beneath his bare feet and the dressing gown clung to him like a remarkably distracting second skin. He must have heard them talking as soon as turned off the tap and rushed out without toweling off. Considering the man could look put together in the middle of a three day strop his current state of dishevel spoke volumes with regards to just how upset he must be.

“Why are you here, Mycroft? Have you already met your quota for toppled governments for the day?” 

Mycroft stood and buttoned his jacket. “As always, I merely wish to ensure your continued well-being.”

“My being is quite well, I assure you.” Sherlock’s wet feet smacked against the floor as he walked over and opened the door to the landing. “I know there is some adage regarding the door and your arse, but I find that I can’t remember it.”

Mycroft scowled in that way that made him look like he’d licked something bitter. “Do be careful, though, Sherlock. I think you’ll find that the criminal element of London has enjoyed quite a renaissance during your great hiatus. I would so hate for you to be caught with your pants down, so to speak.” Mycroft eyed his brother’s state of undress with disdain. He stopped just inside the door frame and turned to John. “I’m counting on you to keep an eye on him, Doctor Watson. Do not fail him.”

“Good bye,” Sherlock sing-songed and slammed the door in his brother’s face.

The kitchen was filled with an awkward sort of silence while they listened to Mycroft’s retreating steps and the shutting of the door to Baker Street.

“Nosy wanker,” John offered in an effort to break the tension. Sherlock didn’t acknowledge him and after a moment he turned and went back to his bedroom, closing the door behind him. John didn’t see him again for the rest of the day.

. . .

An uncomfortable fugue settled over the flat after Mycroft’s visit. Sherlock had begun to grow restless and irritable. He wouldn’t engage in conversation with John unless prompted, and he’d taken to discarding various books and case files everywhere as his continued failure to grasp his own concept of deduction began to wear on him.

The afternoon found him sprawled out on the sofa in his dressing gown and pajamas with his head hanging backwards over the arm rest. John wasn’t sure if the slump had been inevitable or if it had been his own fault for introducing the concept during his conversation with Mycroft.

“This isn’t working.”

John looked up from the newspaper he was reading in alarm. “What isn’t working.”

Sherlock sighed dramatically. “This case. How am I supposed to solve anything when I’m missing key pieces of information?”

John let out a breath he didn’t realize he was holding. The lingering fear that Sherlock would want to leave or want John to leave had grown strong over the last few days. “Well, what is it that’s holding you back?”

“I don’t know!” Sherlock cried, throwing his hands up towards the ceiling. “There is all of this information dancing about inside my head. Pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that are all the wrong shapes. Nothing fits together the way it should.”

“Could you try focusing on something else?”

“Like what? Everything in this flat reminds me of what I cannot do. I’m surrounded by my own reminders of my own failure.”

Truthfully, John was surprised that Sherlock had made it this long. He hadn’t left the flat at all since he had moved back in and John supposed that a bit of cabin fever was inevitable. Mycroft’s continued warnings regarding Sherlock’s safety were at the forefront of John’s mind, but he had seen Sherlock drive himself mad when left in a state such as this for long. John understood that Sherlock needed to get out of the flat, and John wanted to help him, but most anywhere that John would have once thought they could go – Angelo’s, the lab at Bart’s - was right out. Sherlock was hardly in a fit state for John to go reintroducing him around town. In fact, until John could be sure that Mycroft had handled the legal aspects of erasing Sherlock’s death, he was pretty sure that anonymous activities were the way to go.

“Why don’t we just,” John shrugged. “I don’t know. Let’s just go for a walk, or something.”

“A walk.” Sherlock sucked on lips for a moment and then said, “Fine. Even something so mundane would be better than sitting here while my mind cannibalizes itself.” Sherlock launched himself off the sofa and started for the door.

“But not like that,” John looked pointedly at the bare feet sticking out of Sherlock’s pajama bottoms. “Put some proper clothes on first, and then we can go.”

“Yes, Mummy,” Sherlock muttered, but detoured towards his room all the same.

. . .

The weather that afternoon could only have been described as bloody gorgeous. Sunny and twenty-three degrees with a light breeze, it was about as un-London as you could get. Sherlock visibly relaxed as their steps took them further from the flat. His shoulders un-bunched as his steps grew steadily slower. John felt his own mood lighten considerably as he squinted up at the clear blue sky.

They entered the park via the York Gate. “Here,” John indicated the walking path off to the right. “Let’s skip the gardens and keep to the outer edge. It’s always crowded when it’s nice out.”

And the park was indeed popular. They passed professionals in suits sitting on benches with sack lunches balance on their laps. There were students sitting in clusters under the trees with open books and there were families with coolers and strollers everywhere. They wove their way quietly down a path cluttered with joggers and dog-walkers and couples walking hand-in-hand.

At one point they came upon a small fountain in the center of the path where a child of no more than four was reaching towards a small ball that was floating in the center. Without a word, Sherlock rolled up his sleeves as his long steps took him to the fountain ahead of John. He reached into the water and batted a hand at the ball, sending it bobbing toward the edge near the child.

Delighted squeals followed them down the path and John caught up with Sherlock as he wiped his hand dry on his slacks. Although he didn’t say anything, John couldn’t help but send Sherlock a fond smile.

Farther into the gardens, Sherlock slowed to watch as a butterfly crossed their path to alight on a discarded apple core. Crouching down, he examined wings that were an iridescent lilac-blue with a thin black border. “Did you know that there are fifty-nine types of butterfly in Britain? Polyommatus icarus, or the Common Blue is perhaps the most widespread.”

John stopped and listened attentively as Sherlock continued his monologue on the global implications of declining butterfly populations in the UK. Then something on the path behind them caught his attention and he tuned Sherlock out. There was a man about twenty meters behind them and something about him just seemed out of place to John. They had passed plenty of individuals on the paths but this man stood out. He was nondescript in that way that made it hard for one to hone in on identifying features. Brown-ish hair, average build, average height, wearing a pair of jeans and a t-shirt with a button up shirt hanging open and un-tucked. The man was messing with his mobile phone and walking slow, yet when he looked around it wasn’t at the scenery but always at the path ahead of him.

And he was slowing down.

“Don’t you think? John?”

“Huh, what?” John looked to Sherlock and then back up again, but the suspicious man seemed to have moved on. “Sorry. What was that you were saying?”

“I was merely inquiring as to your opinion on the Thames Estuary Project but I can see your mind is engaged elsewhere.”

“Yeah,” John nodded up the path. “Let’s just keep walking.”

Sherlock scowled at John’s abrupt manner but merely said, “Alright, then.” They continued on the path as it wound around the corner and, although John made several attempts to surreptitiously glance behind him, he did not catch sight of the man again.

At the next crossroad, John made an abrupt turn to the left, back towards the center of the park. They continued their walk in silence, John on guard and Sherlock shooting him a questioning glances every few moments. 

Eventually his intrigue got the best of him. “John,” he began cautiously. “Something’s wrong. What is it?”

“I’m not sure, but I think Mycroft’s having us followed.”

He nodded towards the small sign on the fence across the street which read ‘Queen Mary’s Gardens’. “And we’re going through the gardens to try to lose the tail?”

“Perhaps not,” John says, veering left again instead of crossing the street, skipping the gardens and heading south on Inner Circle.

“Ah, back-tracking,” Sherlock replies quietly before pointing towards the back of a woman walking a dog on the opposite side of the street. “Fantastic animals, the giant schnauzer. Did I ever tell you about the pair that my Grand’Mere had when I was growing up?”

“Really?”

“No, of course not, John. I’m amnesic, _remember_?” John could practically hear Sherlock rolling his eyes and he couldn’t stop the twitch of his mouth into a reluctant smile regardless of whatever else was going on. “I’m simply making casual conversation in an effort to cover for the fact that your shoulders are set and your gait has lengthened. If we are being followed and by someone who is not, in fact, dumber than boiled rocks, then you’ve very likely given away that their cover is blown.”

“Right,” John said, making a conscious effort to relax and slow his steps. He took a half step to the side and knocked into Sherlock’s arm with his elbow. “So, schnauzers?”

“Yes. I was very fond of them. Did you know that they don’t actually get that ‘wet dog’ smell the way that other breeds do?”

“Huh, fascinating. You know, it’d figure that you’d go for a dog with shaggy black hair.”

It took a moment for that to sink in but when it did the reaction was a dramatic roll of the eyes and a long, suffering sigh. “That was pitiful,” Sherlock said as he elbowed John in the arm. His added height making the blow land high on John’s left shoulder. 

“Ow! Wanker. That’s my bad arm.” Annoyance over Mycroft’s gifted security detail fled as John threw his weight into Sherlock’s side and made him careen dangerously into the verge bordering the sidewalk.

John side-stepped to avoid retaliation and would have walked straight into the lamp post if Sherlock hadn’t have grabbed onto his sleeve and pulled him back.

John dissolved into a fit of giggles, Sherlock following suit with his own deep chuckle. They kept walking and a moment passed before John realized that Sherlock was still holding onto his sleeve. To pull away now seemed rude after the inevitable face-plant he’d narrowly avoided. But then Sherlock’s fingers trailed down John’s forearm to rest inquiringly against the back of John’s hand. John didn’t shake him off and as their arms swung gently with their steps Sherlock’s hand slid around John’s so that they were clasped, palm to palm. They quietly held on until they made it back to the gate leading out of the gardens.

. . .

When John awoke in the middle of the night he instantly went through his personal checklist:

 _Danger?_ No.

_Nightmare?_ No.

_Panic attack?_ No.

_Call of Nature?_ No.

_Sherlock?_ …

It had been a very long time since John had gotten this far down his list. As he let his attention turn outside of himself, John began to notice the music. Slow, deep pulls that sounded at once melancholic and achingly beautiful. The music was not something that John could remember having heard before, but he’d recognize Sherlock’s style anywhere. It was a mournful sound and it broke John’s heart with how alone it sounded.

John tossed back the quilt and grabbed a discarded pullover that he threw on over the t-shirt and track pants that he slept in. It was easy enough to descend the stairs quietly in his socks and stop just outside the sitting room door. He would have been deluding himself if John thought that Sherlock didn’t hear him come down the stairs, but the music didn’t stop and eventually John took that as permission and let himself into the room.

Sherlock was standing by the window with his back to the room. His wore only an old t-shirt and his pajama bottoms and his feet were bare. His dressing gown lay pooled on the floor next to his chair, shed like a snake’s skin and forgotten.

John stood awkwardly in the door way for several minutes. Sherlock’s lack of acknowledgement felt like a tacit sort of permission, though, and John soon moved to sit in his chair while he listened. After a time, John was able to pick out a short stanza that seemed to repeat often, yet in a slightly varied manner each time. It made John think of a boat set adrift on the surface of the ocean – tiny and insignificant, lost amongst the raw power of nature. Eventually the music funneled into a single, long note and died out completely, leaving a heavy silence in its wake.

John cleared his throat. “That was beautiful, Sherlock.”

“Thank you.” He methodically went through the process of loosening the strings before he wiped the instrument down and laid it gently in its case. “Mycroft had a violin at the house, of course. I learned that I could play as soon as my injuries had healed to the point that I could sustain the position long enough to play. But it never felt right, somehow. I felt like something was missing.”

“And now?”

Sherlock lovingly ran his fingers down the strings of his bow. “I think I was just playing with the wrong instrument. This one feels right, somehow. I pick it up and it feels like an extension of my hands.”

“The music sounded very sad.”

“Did it? That wasn’t really my intent. Perhaps you’re just assigning your own emotions to something which has none of its own.”

“Perhaps,” John allowed. “Does that make me sad?”

“Are you?”

John blew his breath out through his teeth. Feelings were never really his strong suit, but something about the late hour made it seem safer to talk about such things. “I don’t know what I am right now. This,” he waved his hand around the room. “This is all just so… overwhelming, I guess. Everything changed when you… after you left. And then you came back and it changed again, but not back to the way it used to be. I guess I still feel a little lost, that’s all.”

“After I left,” Sherlock echoed John’s words. “Mycroft said that I _took a tumble._ Has he always been so annoyingly vague?”

“Yes but...” John hesitated. Mycroft hadn't told Sherlock the truth. Not that it was surprising, given Mycroft's history, but if Sherlock didn't know and John told him – it was just a hell of a lot to take in. However, John wasn't Mycroft, and Sherlock deserved the truth. John's took a bracing breath and squared his shoulders. “You didn’t fall, Sherlock. You jumped. That makes a bit of a difference in the interpretation of it all.”

“I… jumped?” Sherlock’s eyebrows were slowly knitting together in confusion as his mouth twisted into a frown. “What do you mean?”

John swallowed. “Just what I said. You jumped. You could call it a swan dive, if you like. Only, it wasn’t terribly graceful.”

“Why wouldn’t Mycroft have…” Sherlock shook his head. “Never mind. Ridiculous question. But… why? Why suicide?”

_“What?_ No! God, no, Sherlock. It wasn’t anything like that.”

“Then what on earth could have led me to take such a drastic action? Was it an accident, then?”

“This wasn’t an accident, Sherlock. It was… it was just an impossible situation all around. You made a choice. Maybe you felt like you had no other option, but I know you. And you must have come up with a hundred different solutions up there. But in the end, you chose this one.” John swallowed and looked away. “You stepped up to the edge of the roof of a four story building. Then you _called_ me to say goodbye. And then you jumped.”

John’s voice was steady but eyes burned with the image of Sherlock crashing towards the ground with his coat billowing behind him like some perverse set of wings. Dramatic in every exit – even his last. John looked back at Sherlock, and forced himself to hold friend’s gaze. He needed to know this, and John desperately needed Sherlock to understand what his choice had done to him.

“I had to watch as my best friend leapt off a building to his death. I watched him – I saw you _die_ , Sherlock.” John’s voice trailed off, leaving him with a broken whisper. “I saw you die.”

Sherlock stood there awkwardly as John, having long since abandoned any sense of shame or privacy in front of his friend hung his head and let the deep ache in his chest spill over at last.

He didn’t look up when a strong hand was placed on his shoulder. Sherlock squeezed once before relaxing but staying there. “I’m sorry, John. I didn’t know.”

John cleared his throat and stood with his back to Sherlock as he hastily rubbed the cuffs of his sleeves across his eyes. Whatever might have caused it, whatever reason made Sherlock take such a desperate step, his injuries were not the only hurt done on that day. Sherlock seemed to finally see that, now. He reached out and placed a hand on John’s shoulder, turning John to face him. Carefully, so carefully, he wrapped his arms around John’s shoulders and pulled him in close. _I did this,_ he thought. This hurt, this agony that John quietly endured every day – it was Sherlock’s fault. Maybe he wouldn’t solve the mystery of what had happened to him today, but this right here was something he could do. Something he had the opportunity to fix.

As John relaxed into the grip he brought his own arms up to wrap around Sherlock’s chest, returning the embrace. “Sherlock?” 

Sherlock tightened his embrace and whispered into John’s hair. To his ears. “I’m so sorry.”

John deflated, letting a great rush of air out of lungs and leaving him limp and clinging. “Sometimes I forget that you’re any different, that you don’t remember how things used to be. I go along thinking that we’ve always been like this. But then you go and do something daft like apologize and _mean_ it and then it all comes rushing back to me how different you are.”

“Is that really such a bad thing?” Sherlock inquired.

“It’s not the old you.” John relaxed his grip like he was going to let go but Sherlock lowered the circle of his arms to keep John close.

“Well perhaps it’s a good thing that the old me is gone after all,” Sherlock sniffed in contempt. “It doesn’t sound like he was very nice.” 

“No,” John laughed weakly. “Not nice. But you were the most brilliant man I’ve ever known. And you still are.” This time he succeeded in pulling back but put his hands on Sherlock’s biceps, rubbing gently and softening the retreat. “You’re just showing it in different ways now. Not quite so smug about it, either.”

Sherlock smiled softly at John. “Something to work on, I suppose.”

. . .

Once the novelty and overwhelming relief of the situation had worn off, living with Sherlock again had turned out to be almost as trying as it had always been. Granted, John considered himself quite lucky that there were as of yet no experiments on the kitchen table or body parts secreted away in the appliances. However, the insufferable git still tore the flat apart when he needed to find something _for a case_.

John stood in the open door to Sherlock’s bedroom and watched for a moment as the man shifted stacks of papers and upended boxes on the floor.

“I need a compass, John. Where would I keep a compass?”

“I’m sure you’ve got one in here somewhere.”

Sherlock turned on him and fumed. “Well of course I would have one in here somewhere. Finding it is the issue. This would all be so much simpler if I could just _remember_ where I kept it.”

“Well here,” John pushed off the door frame and went into the room to help. “You had the most ridiculous organization system of anyone I’ve ever known. Try to describe a compass for me and I’ll see if I can help you find it.”

Sherlock rolled his eyes in the manner of the long suffering. “How am I to describe something when I can’t remember what it looks like?”

“Don’t tell me about _your_ compass. Tell me about them in general. How would you describe what they’re used for? That sort of thing. You had a tendency to group items by the most bizarre categories like ‘sharp, pointy bits’ and ‘things that measure.’”

“Well, that second one sounds perfectly logical.”

“I once found a shoe box that contained a meat thermometer, a set of calipers, a tailor’s tape, and a Geiger counter. So excuse me for trying to wrap my own head around how that brain of yours thinks.”

“What is so odd about that?”

“You kept it in the refrigerator!”

“Oh, this is no use.” Sherlock tipped the stack of files he was shifting onto the floor and flopped face-first onto the bed.

John put the shoe box full of screws back on the book shelf. He walked around to the far side of the bed and sat down. John almost made a move to comfort Sherlock with a hand on his shoulder but after their walk in the park the action seemed somewhat more loaded than usual and so he left his hand fall.

“Tell me what’s going on in that head of yours.”

“I don’t understand,” Sherlock’s words were muffled as he spoke into the blankets. “Mycroft said I was clever. He had these unrealistic expectations about what I should be able to figure out on next-to-nothing and it makes no sense. I keep trying to put thing together and I keep getting it wrong.”

“You told me once that you always get something wrong.” Sherlock scowled and so John changed tactics. “Why don’t you try walking me through it. Maybe we can see where you’re going wrong.”

Sherlock sighed heavily and rolled onto his back. “Where should I start?”

“The beginning?”

“Now who’s being clever?” Sherlock sighed. “Alright. We’re in my room –”

“What makes you say this is your room?”

Sherlock frowned. “You told me it was.”

“Yeah,” John smiled. “But you can’t always believe what people tell you. What do you _observe_?”

“Oh for goodness sake. Are you enjoying this?” He shifted his shoulders, making himself more comfortable. “Fine. There is correspondence over on the desk with my name on it.”

“Did you remember your name when you woke up or is it something that was told to you?”

“Now you’re being deliberately difficult.”

“And later you can look up karma on the internet,” John smirked. “But alright then, I’ll give you the name bit. What else can you tell.”

“The trousers hanging in the closet are my size, or close enough to it. They are the right length if a tad snug at the waist, but you yourself had observed that I’d ‘fattened up a bit’ during my convalescence.”

“Okay, better. What else?”

Sherlock sat up, looking around the room. “The bureau belongs to someone who’s right handed, which you obviously are not.”

“How do you know it’s for a right handed person?”

Sherlock stood up and went to the drawers so that he could point things out as he talked. “Static elements on the left: framed photograph of young boys in school uniform, antique snuff box and this frankly ludicrous figurine of a cat waving.” Sherlock punctuated his lecture by striking the tiny porcelain paw and making it rock back and forth. John remembered that cat. Sherlock had been wearing an identical scowl on the day John gave it to him, just after he’d published his blog post about the Blind Banker. “These are sentimental items which wouldn’t have been accessed on a daily basis. There is a kink in the cord for charging a mobile phone which indicates that, although it’s plugged into an outlet on the left, the cord is habitually draped behind the bureau to lay on the right hand side. Additionally, the surface on the right hand side shows shallow scratches from the emptying of pocket contents such as keys.” 

“Huh.” Sherlock turned back. John looked up at him and smiled. “That was amazing.”

Sherlock didn’t quite blush at the praise, but it was a close thing. “Do you really think so?”

“Yes, of course it was. How could you ever be anything but?”

Sherlock turned away and slowly ran his hands over the bureau’s surface. “Mycroft never seemed to think it was enough. I just told you what I see.”

“It’s not just what you see, Sherlock. It’s how you interpret what you see. I look at the same space and I just see ‘stuff’. Nothing jumps out at me and when it does, it’s usually irrelevant. But you? You can tell the why of it and that’s what makes you unique.”

“Is this what I do, then?” Sherlock asked, quietly.

“Yeah,” John answered quietly. “It is.”

“Mycroft made it sound like I possessed some monumental skill but this seems more like a parlor trick. How can knowing that a bedroom’s occupant was right handed be important?” 

John stood up and approached him slowly. “Sometimes it makes all the difference in the world. I saw you rule out a suicide once, simply because a victim was left handed. A man was murdered and his killer would have gotten away with it if you hadn’t noticed that his coffee cup handle turned to the left.

Sherlock walked back to the bed and sat down.

“Do you think I’ll ever get that back?”

“What, the amazing deductions?” John took a deep breath and went over to sit next to Sherlock. “Yeah. I think it’s already coming back.”

Sherlock leaned his head on John’s shoulder, and John found himself wrapping an arm around him as if it were the most natural motion in the world. 

“But what about the rest of it?” Sherlock whispered. “The knowledge seems easy enough. I can re-read books and case notes, but I can’t remember where we went on our first date.”

John sucked in a sharp breath as the warning bells started screaming in his head. _Bit not good,_ his mind kept telling him and yet he could not make himself let go of the fragile intimacy.

Instead he cleared his throat and said, “I guess we could say that it was the first time you took me to Angelo’s.”

John felt Sherlock smile against his neck. “Well, now I really must meet the man.”

“We were there on a case,” John continued, his hand gently stroking Sherlock’s arm. “We sat at a table in front where you could watch the street through the window. I don’t think you ate a bite.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Sherlock scowled. “Why would we go out to eat if I wasn’t hungry?”

“You always said that the work comes first. You put it before sleep, before food.”

“Before you?”

John sighed. “Sometimes.”

“I sound like a lousy date,” Sherlock groused.

John chuckled. “The worst.” He’d turned his head so that the words were whispered into the curls on the top of Sherlock’s head.

John sucked in a breath as Sherlock turned his head into John’s neck. The feeling of soft lips working their way up his neck made his skin tingle in a not wholly unpleasant way. He clenched his other hand in his lap to prevent himself from reaching out. “Sherlock. What are you doing?”

“Making new memories.” Sherlock brought his face directly in front of John, so close that their noses touched.

John knew there were dozens of reasons why this was a horrible idea, but he just couldn’t focus on any of them at the moment. He was distracted by the fluttering feeling in his chest that made him want to either laugh hysterically or possibly vomit. It was the way he’d felt about kissing back when kissing was something new and amazing. Looking up into Sherlock’s eyes, so close and so very focused on nothing but him, John found himself incapable of pulling away. “Okay,” he breathed.

Sherlock leaned into him, pressing his lips softly against John’s. Sherlock’s lips were warm and a bit dry as they moved tentatively against John’s own. He pulled back mere centimeters and John saw Sherlock pull his lower lip into his mouth as if he were savoring the taste of John on it. John leaned in to taste as well, trailing a series of gentle kisses across Sherlock’s lower lip in the tiniest of increments.

Sherlock exhaled like he’d been holding his breath. John closed his eyes and parted his lips, pulling Sherlock’s upper lip between his own and sucking gently, causing Sherlock to make a delightfully broken sound that fell somewhere between a sob and a sigh – high pitched, vulnerable and utterly wrecked.

John caressed Sherlock’s upper lip with the tip of his tongue, and placed a parting kiss at the corner of Sherlock’s mouth before pulling back just far enough to rest his forehead against him. They stayed like that for a moment, both holding the other up and breathing hard like they’d run half-way across town.

Long, dark lashes fluttered open and looked John in the eyes. “Thank you,” Sherlock breathed, smiling. “It’s like I get to have a first kiss all over again.”

John’s breath caught for a moment, but then he forced himself to breathe slowly. He’d already violated Sherlock’s trust on its deepest level. He couldn’t bring himself to lie about it, too. “It’ll always be our first kiss, Sherlock.” John pulled back to put a bit of space between them. “The amnesia couldn’t take away what was never there.”

Sherlock blinked. Twice. “We didn’t do this before?”

“No,” John admits, releasing his grip on Sherlock’s shoulder and folding both hands in his lap.

Sherlock was frowning deeply now. “Then what was I to you if not a lover? It seemed the most logical conclusion. And it felt… right.”

John took a moment to gather his thoughts. “You were - and are - my best friend. In fact, you told me once that I was your _only_ friend. We were colleagues, of a fashion. You used that brilliant mind of yours to solve crimes and I helped wherever I could; whether it was with medical expertise or just backup. And then I’d write up our cases in the blog and people would read them and come to you with new mysteries to solve. That’s what we were.”

“Oh,” Sherlock seemed deflated. “I thought that, perhaps, there might have been something more. Something of which Mycroft didn’t approve. What other reason could he have for keeping you away?”

John shrugged. “To be honest, I don’t think he wanted to share your brilliance He’s an opportunistic bastard and he’d rather keep you all to himself.”

Sherlock slid over, putting space between them. “I apologize, for being so forward. I was wrong.”

John rand his hand through his hair, uncertain of how to act in the face of such awkwardness. “It’s alright, really. I’m partially to blame. It was all just so overwhelming, you coming back. I forgot myself for a moment there. What do you say we just move on from here?”

“Yes, thank you,” Sherlock said again softly. He seemed withdrawn in a way he hadn’t been before, but John could neither place his finger on it, nor bring himself to try.

“You’re welcome.” John stood up. “Now then. What on earth did you need a compass for?”

. . .

John lay awake in bed the following morning for as long as he thought he could get away with. They had eventually found a compass, stuffed in the pocket of a carpenter’s tool belt in the back of the closet. Sherlock had cried out with delight and immediately fell to work marking a topographical map of London with relative wind speeds and temperatures. He had been so engrossed in his task that when John stood beside him and said goodnight, Sherlock had merely grunted and adjusted the compass.

John knew it was ridiculous to expect any sort of attention from Sherlock when his mind was so preoccupied, but the longer John was allowed to think on the situation, the more uncomfortable he got. He had lain awake late into the night thinking on the myriad of reasons that kissing Sherlock Holmes was definitely not a good idea. Sherlock was his friend. They were very good friends, true, but kissing Sherlock when he couldn’t remember what they were to each other seemed like a dirty trick indeed… even if Sherlock had seemed quite keen on the notion at the time.

Sherlock’s increased affections could easily be an attachment disorder formed as a result of his amnesia. Perhaps they should reconsider the idea of re-introducing Sherlock to a few of the people that he knew. Lestrade, or perhaps Molly. In fact, Molly was a brilliant idea. She was someone who could appreciate Sherlock’s affections.

It wasn't that John _didn’t_ appreciate them. It was just wrong somehow, in some way that he couldn’t quite explain. Perhaps Mycroft was right and Sherlock saw John as some sort of savior that rescued him from his brother’s clutches, and the kiss was just his way of saying thank you. Oh god. Mycroft might kill him. Or have John killed. That certainly seemed like the kind of thing he’d do to someone that took advantage of his baby brother. Whatever had happened between him and Sherlock, it should definitely never happen again. John nodded to himself. Right, never again. Because him and Sherlock weren’t that kind of friends.

And then another stray thought struck him: _And also, you're not gay._ John pulled his own pillow over his face at the thought. Not that he'd ever had any problem with folks who were, and it really didn't matter to him on any philosophical level, but blokes had never crossed his personal radar like _that_. And yet, there he was... mooning over Sherlock like a hormonal teenager. “Bloody hell,” he swore. 

John tossed the pillow aside and swung his legs over the side of the bed. He could hardly spend the rest of his life hiding in his room.

He dressed quickly and had shuffled down the stairs on his way to the kitchen when he passed by Sherlock sitting cross legged on one end of the sofa. 

“I used your computer last night.”

John paused for a moment, wondering just what he was supposed to say to that, momentarily torn. The opportunity to chastise Sherlock for not asking permission in the hopes of him modifying his future behavior was tempting. But in the end, John figured it was probably best to make every attempt to treat Sherlock in exactly the same manner as he would have before his injury, which was to sigh in exasperation and continue on without commenting on Sherlock’s ‘borrowing’ habits.

He spoke as he made his way into the kitchen to start tea. “I suppose we ought to think about getting you one of your own again. Mycroft had sent someone over to take away your old one, after you left. He said something about the Official Secrets Act, but I wasn’t really in a state to argue about it.”

“I solved the case.”

“The - wait, what? You mean just now?”

“No,” Sherlock corrected him. “Seven years ago.”

“Oh,” John tried to hold his disappointment in check. He hardly expected the move back to Baker Street to be a miracle cure, but he refused to give up hope. “So what brought you to that conclusion?”

Sherlock’s mood had deflated a bit with John’s initial reaction, but he seemed to perk up at the opportunity to show off what he’d accomplished. “I was able to find articles pertaining to the case in the online databases of several London newspapers. There were a few short articles in the quality press - all variations on the official press release from New Scotland Yard. They stated that the man originally being held in connection with the crime had been exonerated through the assistance of an ‘independent criminal consultant,’ But did not elaborate any further.” 

“So you think that this ‘independent criminal consultant,’” John couldn’t help making ‘air quotes’ marks with his fingers, “Is you, then? 

“Obviously. But more helpful was an article in _The Sun_.” Sherlock leaned over the side of the sofa to pick up John’s laptop from the floor. “It quoted this Angelo as having said ‘It was a miracle. If it weren’t for Mister Holmes, I’d have spent the rest of my life in jail.’ The article goes on to explain how I had proven that man could not possibly have been responsible for the murders as he was on the other side of London at the time, committing burglary at a house in Dartford.”

“When you put it like that, it does sound pretty fantastical.”

Sherlock narrowed his eyes at John. “And yet, you do not seem the least bit surprised. Why is that?”

John went to sit on the other end of the sofa. He figured sitting in his chair would have been safer, but Sherlock seemed to be making an effort to treat John as if nothing had changed. The least he could do was return the favor. “Well, I’ve seen you do some pretty amazing things. Solve mysteries where no one else could have done it. I’ve never heard the story about Angelo, though. Properly, mind you, not just in passing. How about you tell me how it’s done.”

“But John, I don’t _remember_ how I solved it,” Sherlock replied scathingly.

“No, but I bet you did it with nothing more than the same information that you’ve got in the file there in front of you. So why don’t you walk me through what you know thus far?”

Sherlock hesitated, but he eventually closed John’s laptop and picked the file up off the floor. He settled back against the arm of the sofa and opened the file in his lap. “The first thing I noticed in this file was that the time of death seemed wrong.”

“An exact time of death can be difficult to determine,” John pointed out. “There are so many variables.”

“Precisely.” Sherlock thumbed past a few pages and pulled another sheet to the front of his stack, then tipped it towards John. “In this case the medical examiner estimated time of death using algor mortis.”

John leaned in, scanning information but not really reading. “Body temperature. That can be iffy. Did he use rectal or hepatic? Because if the victims had been engaged in sexual activity -”

“Hepatic, establishing at least a modicum of competence,” Sherlock sniffed. “And consideration was given to the relative differences in the size of the victims. But the ME’s findings did not correlate with other noted phenomenon, most notably lividity in one of the female victims.”

John pressed his lips together, considering that. “Was there any indication that the deaths were spaced apart?”

“No. Several of the wounds show evidence of blood from at least one victim. As best as I can tell, the first blow was to the man in the stomach. The two women had been restrained to the bed using what appears to be a pair of pink, furry hand cuffs. Their only wounds had been the slitting of their throats. The killer then went back to the man where he lay dying and stabbed him an additional seven times.” Again, Sherlock rifled through the papers and pulled up another document. “According to the initial forensics report, the victims died between four and five in the morning on Saturday the 11th of February.”

“And you disagree with that?” John prompted.

“Yes. I don’t think that their calculations took all variables into account.” Sherlock pointed to something in the case notes. “The standard calculation of an estimated loss of body heat of 0.8 degrees Celsius was employed.”

John shrugged. “That’s sounds about right. The murders were committed inside the home where you’d have a fairly constant temperature.”

“But the house was cold. VERY cold. It was noted that the thermostat had been set to fifteen degrees, which is considerably below comfort level, especially for those removing clothing to engage in sexual activity.”

“Do you think the killer reset the thermostat on purpose?”

“No. It was dusted for prints and the most superficial set belonged to the male victim, which made sense as it was his home. The house was new and built by a developer that prided itself on, among other things, state-of-the-art climate control.” Sherlock flipped through the file again, pulling out a photograph showing the read out on the digital thermostat with a set temp reading of fifteen degrees and a room temp of sixteen. “The thermostat is one of those ridiculously complicated things which could be programmed for up to four different settings throughout a given day.”

John scowled in confusion, prompting Sherlock sigh impatiently before elaborating further. “One could set it so that the house would be kept at a comfortable temperature during the waking hours before and after work, and at a slightly lower temperature overnight when people usually sleep under thick blankets and appreciated a drop in ambient temperature of at least a degree. Additionally, the temperature can be dropped further during the work day when no one is home in order to save on heating costs.”

“But why would all of the settings have been set to… Oh! You turn the heat down when you go out-of-town. No point in heating an empty house.”

Sherlock grinned. “Exactly. The wife of the victim left home on Thursday afternoon and, as her husband was supposed to be in Edinburgh on business through the following week, she anticipated the house being empty over the weekend and reset the thermostat to conserve energy. When the husband came home on Friday evening with his mistresses, the house was cold. Rather than spend considerable time changing the pre-sets, he merely adjusted it for their immediate comfort.”

“But then wouldn’t the thermostat just readjust itself again at the next pre-set time interval?”

Sherlock looked thoughtful, with just a hint of a smile playing at the corner of his mouth. “It would, wouldn’t it. The husband didn’t turn off the program. It would have adjusted the temperature at bedtime. The couple worked in the city. They’d have to get up early and therefore bedtime could have been as early as 9pm.”

“A dramatic drop in temperature would have certainly killed the mood.”

“Yes. A comfortable setting for unclothed activities would have been at least twenty-two degrees. He may have set it higher than that. A temperature drop of seven degrees in a well-insulated home of that size would have taken…” Sherlock placed his hands, palms together, so that they rested against his mouth and chin and his eyes lost their focus while he calculated. John bit his lip to keep his own reactions in check. “At least four hours,” Sherlock continued.

John looked on in amazement, while Sherlock continued as though he hadn’t just performed exceedingly complex mathematical equations in his head.

“The temperature hadn’t fully dropped by the time that the police arrived. That photograph of the thermostat is time-stamped at 9am.” Sherlock tapped his fingers against his chin. “The programming on the thermostat had to have been manually over-ridden at some point after approximately 9pm and then reset itself around 5am the following morning, the next likely scheduled temperature change.”

“So what does that all mean?” John asked.

“The time of death was calculated assuming that the temperature in the house was fifteen degrees at the time the victims died. But it was sixteen at 9am the following morning – colder than the air outside, which would have been making its way into the house every time the door opened.”

“Which would have been happening quite a lot, what with the police traipsing about,” John added.

“Precisely. It is highly unlikely that the house would have been _warmer_ than the pre-set unless it was still in the process of cooling down. If the house had been warmer, then the time of death would have been significantly earlier than initially calculated.”

John almost prompted him with another question, but Sherlock had that _look_ on his face. The one he got when things really started to crash together inside his head - so john sat quietly and listened, as enthralled as he’d ever been.

“The bedroom was set up for sexual activity, yet very little had actually taken place. There were signs of penetration on both of the females but no genetic material suggesting intercourse. No used condoms in the room, although an unopened box was sitting on the night stand.” Sherlock tapped a finger against his lips while he thought.

“They were interrupted,” John jumped in. “Which means that something stopped their sexy times much earlier in the evening. If they got to the house late Friday evening, why wait until the wee hours of the morning to get frisky?”

“Between the obvious interruption of their activities, and taking the increased ambient temperature into account, the victims must have died closer to 10pm. Which means that- JOHN!”

John sat back as Sherlock launched himself off the sofa and began pacing the room with his hands clenched tightly behind his back.

“The wife had been at her sister’s in Portsmouth since Thursday. The two argued and the wife returned to the city. But she said that she had a change of heart and came right back. Ticket stub for the 11:15 train out of Waterloo was turned over to the police as proof of alibi and she was back at the sister’s a little after one in the morning. The sister can attest that the woman did not leave the house again until after the police arrived at eleven o’clock to inform her of her husband’s death. Her alibi was considered solid because the death had been estimated to have occurred between four and five o'clock in the morning.”

John couldn’t help but interject, getting caught up in the thrill of the process. “But the murders hadn’t occurred in the early morning hours. The timing fits. If she took a cab then she could have made it home from the train station and happened upon her husband and his lovers. She kills them in a fit of jealous rage and then took the next train back to her sister’s where she pretended like nothing happened.”

“The window of opportunity is tight,” Sherlock conceded. “But it just might work.”

“More importantly, Angelo wasn’t even IN the area until four am. It says here that CCTV caught him running a red light in a stolen car a block away from our victim’s house.”

“The murders took place in St. Albans. Angelo stole the car from the driveway of the house he had just burgled in Dartford. Neighbor saw him drive away at just after one am. Prior to that there are several eye witnesses who can place him at a local pub from 9pm until just after midnight. There is no possible way that he could have been in St. Albans at the time of the murders.”

“Which means that you’ve just proven that the police arrested an innocent man.” Sherlock’s enthusiasm had grown as the case wove itself before them and John couldn’t help but return his infections grin. “My God, you are amazing.”

“This is fantastic!” Sherlock pumped his fist in the air, then tumbled back onto the sofa, swinging his legs up and laying his feet in John’s lap. _Okay,_ thought John, looking down at Sherlock’s feet warily. _That’s getting a bit_ too _comfortable ._

“The science of deduction! John, this is brilliant. I can see now how I could have made this my life’s work.”

John rested his hand on Sherlock’s shin, taking a moment to collect his thoughts. “You still could, you know. You’ve just proven you know how.”

Sherlock swallowed and looked away, his delight fading as quickly as it had surfaced. “This doesn’t mean I’m cured, John. I may never recover the memories that I’ve lost.”

“Then make new ones.” Sherlock turned back to him but didn’t reply. “I’m serious, Sherlock. There is a whole host of things that you don’t remember. You once admitted to deleting the solar system, for Christ’s sake. Why does this have to be any different?”

“But people have certain expectations –”

“Oh, sod them all. Since when did you start caring about what other people think?”

“I care about what _you_ think.”

John looked down at his hand and gave Sherlock a gentle squeeze. “Yeah, well I think the world has spent just about enough time without you in it.” John swallowed hard but forced his next words out anyway. “I missed you.”

Sherlock blinked at him, seemingly lost for words for a moment before he pulled himself upright and wrapped his arms around his bent legs, resting his chin against his bent knees. “I went on the internet and found the man the police had arrested for the murders,” he said quietly. “He apparently owns an Italian restaurant in Chelsea.”

“Angelo,” John smiled as he stood up. “He makes the most amazing gnocchi. When you’re settled again, we’ll have to go see him. He’ll be tickled when he finds out you’re still with us.”

“Hmm.” Sherlock grew quiet after that, and John occupied himself with making himself a long-overdue cup of tea.

. . .

Mycroft called that afternoon and against his better judgment, John answered the phone. “Hang on a second,” he said quietly as he slipped a piece of junk mail into the journal he was reading to mark his spot. Sherlock had eventually fallen asleep on the sofa and in an effort to let him be, John took his phone up to his bedroom and closed the door.

“Sorry about that,” John said into the phone. “Sherlock was asleep in the sitting room and I didn’t want to wake him.”

_Has he been having problems sleeping?_ Mycroft didn’t waste any time in his interrogations.

“Hell, I don’t know how much he’s been trying. He’s already awake by the time I come down most mornings, and he’s rarely gone to bed before me. I sort of assume he must be getting _some_ sleep as he’s not exhibiting any signs of deprivation. I imagine he needed quite a bit of rest while he was recovering, but how much sleep had he been getting recently?”

_He actually slept quite an alarming amount while he was staying here. It’s odd that he would change his habits so quickly. Have you had any success in engaging his mind?_

“Yeah, he actually was able to put together one of his old cases just this morning.”

There was the sound of a sharp inhalation on the other end of the phone – more emotion than John had ever heard from Mycroft, excluding annoyance. _That’s wonderful!_

“Don’t get too excited just yet. It took him the better part of the week to do it and he spent half of that time crawling up the walls.”

_Sherlock’s propensity for ennui is a significant weakness. It leads him to bad decisions and he lets his guard down in an effort to seek stimulation. Do try to be patient with him, John._

“Yeah, I know. I ended up taking him for a walk in the park like a puppy. It seemed to help, though.”

_You let Sherlock leave the flat? I am not sure that was a wise move. Moriarty’s criminal network was easily dismantled after his death, but I have began to worry that perhaps it was a bit_ too _easy._

“I don’t see why you’re so bothered by a little outing in the sun. It’s not like your shadows couldn’t keep up.”

_What do you mean by “shadows”? Do you believe you were being followed?_

Instantly, John felt something cold and heavy congeal in the pit of his stomach. “Wait, I thought you had the flat under surveillance. I’m sure I’ve seen this guy around Baker Street before. He’s never made contact and I’ve always just assumed he was one of yours.”

_No, John. I discontinued surveillance on the flat shortly after Sherlock’s funeral._

John swore under his breath. He could hear Mycroft snapping his fingers at someone on the other end of the line.

_With Sherlock incapable of giving a statement with regards to his interactions with Moriarty, we cannot risk involving the police. I also cannot assign a government security detail on the house of a dead man._

“I didn’t think that would be so far beyond your reach. And here I thought you _were_ the British government.”

_John, I think you’ll find the carte blanche that I once enjoyed with my position has been somewhat limited by Sherlock’s public disgrace. The cases in which I involved him were of the highest security. I could engage a private security firm in the matter, but they could not be trusted with the truth. You’ll have to be extra vigilant while I figure something out._

“Right, yeah. Constant vigilance and all that.”

Mycroft disconnected the call without another word. John tossed his mobile onto the bed and sat thinking for some time.

. . .

Sherlock was awake by the time John came back downstairs. “Have a nice nap?”

“It served its purpose.”

“So what now?”

“Bored.”

“Well that didn’t last long.” John commented dryly as he crossed the room.

“You could re-introduce me to Angelo,” Sherlock rose to follow John into the kitchen. “I would like to verify some of my conclusions regarding the timeline of events.”

“I’m not really sure that’s a good idea.” John spoke over the sound of the tap as he filled a glass with water.

“Why not?”

“Well for starters, are you actually hungry?”

Sherlock’s brows furrowed and John figured he was probably trying to work out why he’d have to be hungry in order to meet the man. “I don’t see how that is relevant.”

“Well I’m not, and going to see Angelo - at his restaurant - when neither of us intends to eat would just be insulting.”

Sherlock harrumphed. “Did you have a more socially palatable suggestion, then?”

John thought about his conversation with Mycroft and the danger he and Sherlock might facing. “How about you show me a bit of what it took for you to earn that certificate hanging above your bed.”

Sherlock looked puzzled. “You want me to teach you judo? I’m not sure that I’d remember how.”

“I don’t want a lesson. Let’s just spar for a bit and see what you can remember. I’m sure we could both do with the exercise.”

“What, in here?” Sherlock looked around their cluttered flat.

“No, of course not. But I could get the keys to the basement flat. Mrs. Hudson never did find anyone to let it out to. Lots of space.”

Sherlock considered this for a moment. He gave one curt nod. “Alright then.”

John grinned. “Excellent. Just let me go change into something appropriate and you do the same. Then we can head down.”

John went up to his room and pulled on a long-sleeved t-shirt and the pair of track suit bottoms that he’d slept in the night before. The sleeves and long pants would protect his skin from abrasions and help keep him warm in the cold basement. It seemed appropriate enough. However, John reconsidered his standards of appropriate when he came downstairs to find Sherlock standing at the kitchen sink, draining a glass of water. The man had tipped his head back, elongating his neck and allowing John an excellent view of his prominent Adam’s apple that bobbed as he swallowed. Sherlock drained the glass and used the thumb and forefinger of his right hand to wipe the water from his lips. He raised an eyebrow at John as if to ask him, _see anything that you like?_

God, that man was cocky. But his cockiness wasn’t the only thing that had John’s attention. Sherlock was dressed in a martial arts uniform made out of some sort of heavy-weight white fabric. The outfit was well-worn and perfectly broken in – usually a sign that the person wearing it had enough experience to inflict a fair bit of damage. The jacket had no fastenings and was instead held closed with a thin, neatly-tied black belt that spoke of a skill that had John at once impressed and not a little bit apprehensive.

Suddenly, John’s faded track suit bottoms seemed woefully inadequate. “Where did you get that?” Even as the words slipped out of his mouth, John felt like the idiot Sherlock was always calling him.

Sherlock rolled his eyes. “You instructed me to change into something appropriate for sparring. It was in the closet in my room, and it seems to fit me adequately. The judo certificate on my wall attributes the award of second _dan_ to my name, even if I don't remember a moment of the training that would have entailed. Therefore, this seemed like the most appropriate attire for the activity.” He let out a huff of air and his shoulders slumped. “I tied the belt before I realized what I’d done, but now that I’m thinking about it, I cannot remember how the knot is made.”

John gave him a sympathetic smile. “Well... muscle memory, right? If you've got the muscle memory to tie the belt, then there's a good shot that you'll be able to pull up some of your old skills. A bit like what you did with the violin.”

Sherlock narrowed his eyes skeptically before he shrugged. “I suppose it may not be an entirely futile exercise.”

“Ever the optimist. Are you ready?” John asked, and at Sherlock’s nod he grabbed he’s keys off of the table and led the way downstairs.

On the first floor, John let himself into Mrs. Hudson’s rooms so he could pick up the keys to the downstairs flat. He caught a glance of a sad looking plant on a stand in the corner and thought, _Shit. I need to remember to water that thing._ Still, it had waited this long, and it would probably keep.

A moment later, they'd made their way into the unoccupied basement flat. The air smelled just a touch musty, but not oppressively so. The ceilings weren't very high compared to the upper floors, but there was no furniture in the way, and John figured that was more important.

“Hmm... as long as you don't send me flying through the air or try to pull off any flips, we ought to be able to work in this space,” John mused as he started stretching automatically. When Sherlock didn't answer immediately, John broke the stretch to look up.

Sherlock was standing in the middle of the room with his arms folded across his torso, looking positively awkward. It was a look John didn't associate with the man... especially not with Sherlock wearing the well-earned attire of a skilled martial artist. 

“Sherlock? Maybe a few stretches to start out? Seeing as it's been a while and all, we don't need pulled muscles.”

“Right,” Sherlock said distractedly, looking around once before shaking his arms out and pulling his right arm across his body. “Right, of course.”

It took a few moments before John realized that Sherlock might not remember how to do this. Stretching involved conscious and deliberate movements, not reaction. Every stretch Sherlock did was something he'd watched John do just a moment before. John said nothing, and instead focused on making his own motions slow and clean; easy for Sherlock to follow. 

“Okay, I think that's about enough,” John said with a satisfied grunt as he broke his last stretch, and kicked off his trainers. He bounced back and forth on his toes a few times before jogging lightly in place. “Let's have at it, then.”

Sherlock came out of a hamstring stretch, and John caught a distracting glimpse of smooth chest that was exposed as Sherlock's gi fell open just a bit. In the momentary distraction, he almost didn't notice that Sherlock took a half-step backwards from John, regarding him warily. “Have at _what_ , John?”

“Sparring.”

Sherlock watched John for a moment, frowning. “You'd have to show me.”

John didn't even try to hide his incredulity. “You're the man with the damned black belt, and I'm the idiot in track bottoms.”

“And as a soldier, I'll assume that you've learned more than a little hand-to-hand combat in your day.” This time, Sherlock took a step closer. “If you expect me to recall detailed and advanced judo skills when I can't even remember the name of my sensei, then you –”

John didn't allow Sherlock the chance to finish. With a broad grin, he took an intentionally slow, wide right hook towards Sherlock's shoulder. Sherlock’s eyes went wide in the split second it took for him to realize what was happening, and he only partially dodged out of the way so that John clipped him in back of the arm.

“What are you – are you just going to _hit_ me?” Sherlock blurted as he rubbed at his triceps. 

“Better me than someone else,” John said evenly. He jumped in closer and took a light left jab towards Sherlock's right shoulder, taunting him. “At least I’m not _trying_ to hurt you.”

“That’s not what it looks like to me.”

“Block me, then.”

“I don’t know how.” 

“Bollocks. Of course you know how. It’s reflexive. You’ve already taught your muscles how to do this. Trust me, Sherlock. They’ll remember.”

“Muscles don't have brains, idiot,” Sherlock said, but his feet were starting to move, mirroring John’s own circling pattern of steps. 

“Idiot yourself,” John chuckled; stepping in and out of Sherlock's striking range rapidly, testing the waters. “I didn't get my degree from a mail-order catalogue. The area of the brain controlling muscle memory is completely separate from higher thought processes. You don't have to _think_ to walk, ride a bike, drive a car, or – in your case – play classical violin music. You just _do_ it.” John swung again, this time going for a light strike against Sherlock's left hip.

This time, Sherlock made a clumsy attempt to block. He almost made it, but was a bit too slow. “I _don't. Know. How!_ “ Sherlock's eyes were wide, and he was starting to breathe a bit faster. 

“You’re over-thinking it. Turn off that brain of yours for just a moment and let yourself react. Stop trying to anticipate the blows and just react to them when I move.” 

John knew he was playing a dangerous game. Sure, he'd had some solid hand-to-hand training, and he could easily hold his own in a brawl, but martial arts were a game he'd never played. He certainly couldn't hold a candle to a judo expert in a game of grappling. If something triggered Sherlock's skills, John knew he'd find himself in a world of hurt in very short order, but that was a risk John was willing to take. Slow swings and light, non-threatening punches weren’t doing it. John needed to find a way to force Sherlock to defend himself. 

In one abrupt and direct movement, John cupped his left hand and went directly at Sherlock's throat. 

It happened so fast. There was a flash of pain across his forearm, a fist striking his cheek, a hip jutting up and under his own, and an arm across his neck and chest. The floor was suddenly beneath John’s back, and he was wondering where all the air in his lungs had gone. 

John coughed. He wheezed through a shallow inhale and then coughed again. 

John blinked up at Sherlock standing over him. He had planted his left foot in John's armpit. One hand twisted John's arm in a lock that threatened dislocation if he moved, and the other hand was drawn back, ready to strike. In stark contrast to all of that, Sherlock's eyes were wide with surprise, and his mouth was hanging open slightly in disbelief. 

“I... I'm sorry, John. I...”

Despite the aching ribs, John barked out a laugh. “If you’re really so sorry, then help me up off the floor.”

Sherlock adjusted his grip on John’s arm and used it to haul him to his feet.

John took a moment to take stock of his own body and decided that there was no irreparable damage. John shook out his arms and legs and settled back into a sparring pose. “That was excellent, Sherlock. And now that I know you’re still able to rip me limb from limb, I'll be a bit more careful.”

Sherlock was frowning. “You intend to continue?”

“It’s not much of a practice if we stop after one go.”

“You hit the floor quite hard. Are you certain that you're not injured?”

A melancholy sensation settled in John's chest. The old Sherlock would have never given him that kind of consideration. “I was a soldier, Sherlock. I can handle a lot more than this. So come on now,” John prompted, shifting his weight onto his back foot and bracing for the next blow.

But Sherlock wasn't reciprocating the pose. “Fair enough. I will continue, but first I must ask, why the sudden interest in my judo training?”

John hesitated, probably a fraction of a second too long. “I just want you to be able to defend yourself.”

“Against what?”

“Against _everything_ , you great pillock. It’s a dangerous life that we lead, and I can’t always be there to protect you. So I just need to prove to you that you know how to protect yourself.”

For a long moment, Sherlock seemed to consider this. Then, with only a single nod as a warning, Sherlock settled himself into a stance that seemed to come almost too easily. “Then prove it.”

John couldn't hold back the insane grin he felt blossoming on his face and he launched himself into another attack. 

Memory or not, Sherlock was more than capable of defending himself bare-handed. John found himself in two strangle-holds and several joint-locks, and on his back enough times to cause permanent damage to his dignity. There was one particularly unfortunate dive that removed a fair bit of skin from the palm of his hand... but he couldn’t complain. John was giving _almost_ as good as he was getting. 

Well, no, perhaps not that good. But he was sweating and flushed, and so was Sherlock, and that was just fine with him, bruises or no. They oscillated between violent bursts of sparring and manic laughter at their respective one-upping of each other. It was wildly intense. It was almost erotic. John tried to ignore it, but _Christ_ , the flush of heat across Sherlock's cheeks was doing things to him that he shouldn't be thinking about when facing off with an unpredictable black belt.

John was feeling reckless and the blood pumping in his ears now had less to do with the rush of a fight and more to do with something completely inappropriate. So when he took a relatively careless swing at Sherlock's head, he shouldn't have been surprised by how easily Sherlock caught his arm. He tried to swing the other, and it was caught just as easily.

He tried to pull away, but found himself immediately backed against a wall, and _fuck_ if he didn't know _exactly_ what he wanted to do at that moment, but the part of his brain that was still rational told him to try to duck out of it.

Sherlock responded by surging forward and pinning John against the wall, John’s wrists still locked in his grasp. They were pressed together, chest to chest, and breathing hard into each other’s space. John looked up at Sherlock and raised his chin, defiant to the last. And then, Sherlock was kissing him. Hard. This was nothing like their tentative kisses from the night before. Sherlock was using his weight to keep John in place. John could feel the movement through his pectorals as Sherlock released his arms to grab him by the back of the neck. John felt finger nails digging into tense muscle hard enough to leave marks.

John’s own hands came up to grasp at Sherlock’s forearms. He dug into the sinewy flesh with blunt fingers. There’d likely be bruises in the morning, but the thought only made John hold on harder, putting even more force behind into the kiss. Sherlock was crowding into his space and it was as an involuntary thrust of John’s hips was met with a broken moan from Sherlock that where John was and what he was doing with whom finally started to soak through.

“Shit,” John muttered against Sherlock’s lips. He turned his head, breaking their kiss. “Wait. I can’t –” Sherlock didn’t back off, and even ducked his head to try to find John’s lips again. “No, Sherlock, listen to me. We can’t do this. I’m sorry.”

“Why, John? Why not?” he asked through gritted teeth. “What is it that makes you think this is so wrong?”

“It’s just… me. Us. We weren’t like this before.”

“I don’t care.”

“But you _should_!” John pushed back and turned away. “I can’t do this with you - _to_ you – when you can’t remember anything.”

“You’re afraid, John. Why? Is this because of the amnesia?”

“Yes. I think so. It’s just – “John blew out his breath in frustration. “You can’t even remember meeting me. I have eighteen months of memories about you that you don’t share.” John looked down, his shoulders dropping in defeat. “I feel like I’m taking advantage of you.”

Sherlock’s expression softened. “John,” he sighed. “Did you know that next week will mark the one year anniversary of my injury?” John nodded but refused to meet his gaze. “You’re right, of course. I don’t remember the day that we met. Or any one of a thousand moments of contact that came before.”

Sherlock stepped in to close the distance between them. “At this point, I don’t think I ever will.” He reached out a hand out to touch John’s shoulder and when he didn’t pull away, Sherlock leaned in enough that John could feel the heat radiating off of his body. He could feel his breath ghosting across his forehead as Sherlock spoke. “I cannot get back the life that I once had. I’m tired of wasting my time, trying. I have to move forward.” Sherlock rested his lips against John’s brow, ignoring the sweat. “I want to move forward with you.”

John brought his arms up to wrap around Sherlock’s chest. He felt him breathing hard and knew it wasn’t just from the sparring. “Okay,” John whispered into his shoulder. “Okay,” he said again, nodding. He leaned back and looked into Sherlock’s eyes. “I’ll need some time, though, okay? I’m not saying ‘no’, it’s just that I’ll need a bit of space to sort this out in my head.”

“John,” Sherlock started to protest.

“No, Sherlock. Really. There are two and a half YEARS of me first knowing and then missing you, and I can’t just delete that and start over again. I need some time to make sense of all that in my head. But, I’m willing to try.”

A somewhat relieved expression blossomed across Sherlock’s face. “Thank you. I cannot ask for anything more.”

John sighed. “Yeah. Come on. Let’s go get cleaned up.” John squeezed once in reassurance and then stepped back. “And maybe some paracetamol and a bag of ice. You had to go and throw me by my bad shoulder, you twat.” But John was smiling as he massaged the abused joint.

Sherlock returned a tentative smile. “It’s natural to be more susceptible to injury as we age,” he groused. “It’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

John moved to smack him on the head, but Sherlock neatly side-stepped the blow, laughing. They were okay, John thought, and that was the important part.

. . .

Sherlock acquiesced and gave John his space after that. Over the next few days, he did not make any further attempts at pushing the status of their relationship. He was, however, quietly _there_ in a way that John couldn’t quite describe. More often than not, John would find Sherlock choosing to be in whatever room John was in. While he cooked, Sherlock would sit at the table and review notebooks detailing old experiments. When he was in the sitting room, Sherlock would lounge on the sofa with case files or perhaps just sitting and thinking. Sherlock now seemed perfectly content to sit in limbo and wait for John to come to some sort of conclusion in his own time.

John had rolled up his sleeves and started gathering the day’s dishes when Sherlock came out of his bedroom, fresh from his shower. “Oh good, you’re done,” John said, and started filling the sink with hot water.

“Who was that at the door earlier?” 

“Your brother sent one of his minions over with a package for you.” John nodded towards the kitchen table where a large padded envelope had been deposited. 

Sherlock sat at the table and ripped into the package. He tipped the contents out onto the table and found that Mycroft had sent over some of his personal effects. There was a wallet and his passport, a ring of keys and an obviously brand new mobile phone. John watched in awe as Sherlock quickly figured out the touch screen and slide-out keyboard.

“Does this mean that you’re no longer legally dead?” John asked, indicating Sherlock’s papers.

“It would appear so.” Sherlock rose from his chair and pulled a piece of paper out of the envelope and tossed it across the table at John before taking his new mobile into the front room.

John wiped his hands on his trousers and picked up the note – a half sheet of heavy paper, folded once. On it was a hand-written note –

_As you have seen fit to begin exploring outside the safety of your Baker Street flat, I’ve taken the liberty of having processed the relevant papers to void your death certificate. Your inheritance from Grand’Mere has been reinstated and a new passport and driving license issued. It was a terribly tedious affair, but if left to your own devices it might never be done._

_Do be careful, little brother._

_\- MH_

John scoffed at Mycroft’s condescending tone. He binned the note and turned back to the washing up. John turned off the tap and squeezed a bit of dish soap onto a rag. He hissed in a sharp breath as he submerged his abused hands in the hot, sudsy water.

“You were pulling your attack the other night,” Sherlock stated from the door. “It was inevitable that you would sustain injury.”

“I was being polite.”

“And you very politely lost. How is your hand?”

“I’ll survive,” John said, scrubbing at a plate. “Besides, the soapy water will soften the scabs. Keep it from scarring.”

“Were the scratches that deep?” Sherlock asked with concern.

John shrugged. “No, but I scraped the heel of my thumb up pretty good.”

A knock at the door made them both look to each other. 

“Well it certainly won’t be for me,” Sherlock stated. “Mycroft’s ‘gift’ hardly requires a follow up visit. Besides, I cannot imagine that he has suddenly learned to knock.” The knock sounded again and John dried off his hands and tossed the towel on the counter. He nodded his head towards Sherlock’s bedroom. 

“What?”

“Well, go on then. Can’t very well have you loitering about if it’s someone I’d invite up.”

Sherlock acted terribly put upon but went to his room all the same. John waited until he heard the door to his room shut before descending the stairs.

John opened the door to the street and found - “Greg! What are you doing here?”

“Can't an old friend stop in for a visit?” Greg said warmly, grabbing John's hand for a firm shake. “Cor, it’s good to see you, John. Missed you at the pub quiz the other week. Alright?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine, sorry. I meant to call you back. I guess I’ve just been a bit distracted. Mrs. Hudson’s off looking after her sister for a few weeks while she recovers from surgery,” John said, indicating her closed door with one hand as a sort of apology for making Greg wait so long for him to answer the door. “Without her coming up with tea and biscuits all the time, I guess I just let time get away from me.”

“Nothing serious, I hope.”

“No, nothing like that. She had a bit of loose cartilage cleaned out of the knee joint. The brace is a pain in the arse, though. Makes it damned inconvenient to get anything done.”

“Well that’s good, then. The bad joints seem to run in the family.”

“They always do.”

Greg smiled for another second before his expression became a bit more serious. “Listen, do you mind if I come up? It’s just that there have been a couple of reports of a suspicious character in the neighborhood and I thought I’d check in.”

John instantly wondered if this was because of Sherlock, and then he thought that it might actually BE Sherlock that was making the neighbors nervous. John shook his head to clear it of those thoughts, realizing that he’d left Lestrade standing in the foyer, waiting for an answer. “Yeah, of course. Sorry. I don’t know where my head is this morning.”

John ushered Greg inside and cautiously followed him up the stairs to flat B. Greg took off his jacket and John tried not to let it show how much it bothered him when Greg draped it over the arm of Sherlock’s chair. “Can I get you something to drink?”

“No, I’m fine. Thanks, though.”

“Right,” John said, taking a seat. “So, have you been designated truancy officer for pub nights?”

“Naw, nothing like that.” Greg sat down, crossing one foot over his knee. “Like I said, just checking in. See if you’d noticed anything amiss around here.”

“Nope,” John answered, shaking his head. “No, it’s the same-old, same-old around here.”

“Is that so? Huh,” Greg responded. “That’s funny. I’d originally called round at the clinic first, figuring you’d be at work. But Sarah said you weren’t in. Hadn’t been in for weeks now, and that seemed a bit odd.”

John swallowed and looked away. “Yeah, well-”

Greg dropped his foot and sat forward in the chair. “Look, John. I think I know what’s going on here.”

John’s head shot up. “What?”

“I mean, it’s coming up on a year now. That’s got to be tough. Lord knows it’s been on my mind and I can’t imagine what’s going on in yours. But you’re shutting everybody out. Skipping pub night, not going to work, Mrs. Hudson gone and you staying here all by yourself… it’s not good.”

“So it’s an intervention. Fabulous,” John muttered, equal parts relieved and irate. “I’ve spent most of my life alone, Greg. I’m doing alright.”

“Sorry to say, but you look like shit, John. There are bags under your eyes, and you’ve got bruising and abrasions on your hands and forearms as well as a bit of a shiner there on your cheek.”

John looked down at where he’d rolled up his sleeves. Bruises on his forearms marked where John blocked Sherlock’s powerful strikes and he’d scraped his knuckles when he landed on the floor. “I know what it looks like, Greg. But really, I’m fine.”

“Are you having problems with the drink? I know it runs in the family.”

“No, of course not,” John replied heatedly. “Look, Greg. I appreciate your concern. I really do.”

The creak of Sherlock’s bedroom door caused both of them to freeze. 

Greg looked uncomfortable as John hung his head and swore. “I’m sorry, John. I didn’t realize you had company.”

John sighed. He knew there were going to get to this point eventually. He might as well get it over with. “It’s alright. You were going to have to find out eventually.” John stood up, and looked back to Greg. “Listen… whatever your first instinct might be, just promise me you’ll try to hold it long enough for us to explain.”

Greg looked at him with growing concern. “What’s going on, John?”

“Here, just… try not hit him. Or me,” John added. “I didn’t know until just recently.”

Greg stood, looking distinctly wary. “What didn’t you know?”

John didn’t answer him. Instead he turned towards the kitchen and raised his voice. “You may as well come out, then.”

A moment later, Sherlock walked into view as though he hadn’t just miraculously risen from the dead, and greeted Greg with a casual, “Hello.”

“Fucking hell!” Greg swore and fell back into the chair. He blinked a few times, breathing fast, then rubbed a hand over his mouth and looked at Sherlock with unrestrained shock. “Son of a bitch.” Then a huge grin erupted across his face. “You fantastic bastard!” Greg jumped up, and Sherlock took a quick step back in surprise, but not fast enough to avoid a bone-crushing hug.

“I don’t know what you did or why or how the HELL you pulled it off, but I am so glad you did.”

Sherlock looked at John pleadingly over Greg’s shoulder and then tentatively raised his hands to return the embrace. The Yarder smacked Sherlock on the back enthusiastically before putting his hands on his shoulders and holding Sherlock out at arm’s length.

“Son of a BITCH!” he shouted, taking a step back and threading his hands behind his head, pacing the floor.

“Now Greg, I know it’s a bit of a shock and all but-” John started.

“Shock! What the fuck? I mean, seriously John. What the fuck?” Greg turned back to Sherlock. “You utter wanker. I thought you took a swan dive off a building and then you turn up a year later, right as rain. What the hell are you playing at?”

“It was real,” John interjected. “Sherlock really did try to paint the sidewalk with his grey matter. Thankfully he was only partially successful.” Lestrade paled considerably.

“It wasn’t really a suicide,” John said quickly. “Well, I suppose that _technically_ , it was. But it wasn’t for the reasons you’re thinking.”

“Christ,” Greg swore. “And the radio silence regarding your partial success?”

“That was all Mycroft’s doing.” John smiled at getting to hoist off some of the blame on him. “He seemed to think it was safer, while Sherlock recovered.”

“Shit!” Greg ran a hand through his hair, turning back to ask Sherlock, “But you’re alright now, yeah?”

“This is all terribly awkward,” Sherlock says.

“I’ll say!” Greg exclaimed.

“The thing is, Greg-” John starts, but Sherlock interrupted and finished for him.

“I don’t know who you are.”

Silence.

Greg sat heavily in the chair. “Fuck!”

. . .

“So it’s all just a blank slate, then?” Greg asked after Sherlock and John had a chance to fill him in on everything. “Do you remember _anything_ from before your fall?”

“Not much,” Sherlock answered, sipping at his tea. He had sat in John’s chair so that he could talk with Greg while made up a pot of tea. He had given Greg’s a heavy splash of scotch to occupy the space he usually reserved for milk. John was pretty sure that finding out one of your friends was not actually dead qualified as a good enough excuse for going off duty a bit early for the day.

“I have a vague recollection of events from my childhood and early adolescence but probably no more than you would of yours. I don’t remember university, but seem to have retained much of the technical knowledge I would have gained there.”

“But not people?” Greg asked.

Sherlock shook his head. “No. Even though my brother was a vague impression from my childhood, I still did not recognize him as an adult.”

“Damn.”

Sherlock tilted his head in concession. “Sometimes people or places will feel vaguely familiar, such as John or this flat,” Sherlock said, frowning as he tried to puzzle that out.

John swallowed too large a mouthful of tea and he coughed. Greg spared a glance for him, sitting at the desk, but didn’t comment. This was the first that John had heard of Sherlock finding anything about him or their home familiar and John was damn sure going to bring that up with him as soon as Greg left.

“But not my brother’s home, oddly, even though comments were made which led me to believe that I had spent time in the home convalescing once before.”

“And you lost everything in order to save us,” Greg vaguely waved his hand in a way that John knew was supposed to encompass himself, John and Mrs. Hudson. Greg sat his cup down and clasped his hands, meeting Sherlock’s eyes. “Thank you, for that. What you did… it was…” Greg sighed. “Just, thank you.”

“I do not remember making that decision,” Sherlock said, looking down at his cup. “But having gotten to know John again - and now you - I am quite sure that I must have felt that it was worth it.”

“Right,” Greg said, sitting up straight and rubbing his hands together. “Having you back on Baker Street certainly makes a suspicious persons report a hell of a lot more interesting.”

John’s interest in the conversation renewed and he sat forward in his chair. “Why are you on the case, anyway? It doesn’t really sound like your usual thing.”

“It’s not, really. I’ve got the Adair murder I should really be focusing on. It’s your kind of case, actually. Locked room murder and all that. I should swing back by with the case file and see what you make of it.” Greg picked up and drained his cup before setting down and smacking his lips. “That’s the ticket. Anyway, one of the constables was taking the piss in the break room, what with it being your old neighborhood. Something just felt off about the whole thing so I made a few inquiries, just to see what was going on.” He smiled ruefully. “Bloody glad I did. How long do you think you’d have kept up with the whole being dead thing, anyway?”

“I am not entirely certain,” Sherlock replied thoughtfully. “Mycroft seemed to think that it would have been dangerous for me to have revealed myself. I’m not sure what he has been waiting for now that I have moved back.”

“You’ve certainly pissed off a lot of people over the years,” John offered. “If word got out that you were off your game, there might be some who would try to take advantage of the situation.”

“I suppose,” Sherlock answered absently. “What were you able to find out regarding the questionable activities in our neighborhood?”

“Not much. Lady across the street and down a few doors says her upstairs neighbor is a drug dealer. Said he loafs about all day, visitors late at night. One of the constables went by to check up on it the other day but no one was home.”

“And the state of the flat?” Sherlock asked with interest. 

“Bloody hell, Sherlock. We can’t just go busting into people’s flats without a warrant. That’s what we had you for! Not that I want you looking into it, mind you. It’s very likely nothing and I certainly don’t want to have to do the paperwork to bail a dead man out on a trespassing charge.” Greg shook his head, and John thought he was probably remembering a time when he’d had to do just that. “Just… try to lay low for a bit, yeah? And for God’s sake, if you see anything suspicious, give us a call.” Greg fished a contact card out of his breast pocket and passed it over.

“I’m serious, Sherlock. Don’t go off investigating on your own until we know what we’re dealing with here.

“Don’t worry, Detective Inspector,” Sherlock sighed. “I won’t.”

John wondered if, this time around and with this new version of Sherlock, he could believe him.

. . .

When it was time for him to take his leave, Greg stood up and stretched, joints popping after several hours ensconced in Sherlock’s chair. He reached out and took Sherlock’s hand and shook it heartily, his left hand gripping Sherlock’s upper arm. “I did miss you, you daft bugger. Don’t ever think differently.”

“Thank you, Detective Inspector,” Sherlock responded awkwardly. “I… wish I could return the sentiment.”

“It’s alright. I wouldn’t know what to do with you if you did.” Greg let Sherlock’s hand drop and added, “And call me Greg. Maybe this time around we’ll get the name to stick.”

“Greg,” Sherlock said with a nod.

Then Greg turned around and patted John once on the shoulder. “Walk me out?”

“Yeah, alright.” John got up and followed Greg out of the room.

As they started down the stairs, they heard Sherlock call out, “Don’t think I don’t know that means you want to talk about me.”

“And here we all though you couldn’t be taught social convention,” John shouted back with a laugh.

They both snickered as they heard Sherlock slam his bedroom door in a huff. “Still the same old Sherlock on the inside,” Greg mused as he continued down the stairs. He paused at the door. “You doing alright, though?” He waved his hand towards the ceiling above them. “Had to be quite a shock and all. I know you’re more of a ‘go it alone’ kind of guy, but this has to be rough on you.”

John turned his head away and blew out a breath. “Yeah, it’s been intense, that’s for sure. What he did was just…” He looked down at his feet before taking a deep breath and meeting Greg’s concerned gaze. “Now I’m sure that if you could have asked him about it back then, he would have said it was all about winning ‘the game’ or some such nonsense. But I knew that man better than he knew himself. When Moriarty threatened the people close to him, Sherlock got scared and he would have been willing to do whatever it took to keep us safe. And in that last moment, he _knew_ he probably wasn’t going to make it and yet he did jumped anyway. For us.”

Greg let out a low whistle.

John nodded. “Exactly. So I’ll be damned before I let him try to do this on his own.”

John had a fire in his eyes that Greg was certain he hadn’t seen in over a year. Sherlock might bring out the worst in just about every other soul in this city, but John he made shine. 

“He’s a good man,” Greg said solemnly. “You two be careful. And if you need anything at all, you give me a call.”

John took Greg’s hand and shook it firmly. “Yeah, thanks Greg.”

Greg nodded once and turned to open the door. “Oh, and one more thing. When princess up there is ready for his big reveal, try to give us a heads up, yeah? I want to make sure that I can see Anderson’s face when he finds out.”

“Ha!” John shook his head. “You got it.”

Greg waved once and was on his way, John shutting and locking the door behind him. As John headed back upstairs, he suddenly felt quite worn out, indeed.

. . .

The conversation with Greg had helped John a bit. The shroud of secrecy surrounding Sherlock’s condition had been taking its toll on him of late, and having the opportunity to share this burden with a friend seemed to have taken a weight off of John’s shoulders. However, the evening left John inescapably exhausted. When he’d stumbled back up the stairs from seeing Greg off, he’d looked ready to tip over.

“Look, I’m knackered,” John had said as he shuffled through the living room. “Can we put off the telling of Greg’s story until tomorrow?” 

Sherlock had only nodded in reply, and John had seemed relieved. He’d brushed a hand over Sherlock’s shoulder as he walked by, squeezing gently. Sherlock had leaned into the touch, but it was gone just as quickly.

“Goodnight Sherlock,” he’d called over his shoulder, retreating to his room and leaving Sherlock alone with his tumultuous thoughts.

John was exhausted. Sherlock could tell. He’d been in a constant state of tension for the past week. It was evident in the tightening of the muscles around his eyes and the way he clenched his left hand like he was itching to just _do_ something, yet could not. To his intense frustration, Sherlock could not determine any way to help.

Sherlock would not flatter himself into thinking that this was entirely related to the potential for a physical relationship between them. Whenever Sherlock did anything that reminded John of his intentions, John would sigh with resignation and tell Sherlock that he was still thinking. He seemed thoughtful, sure, but John didn’t seem to actually be concerned about it.

No, the stress John was exhibiting was different. It reminded Sherlock of the soldier on a constant and sustained period of alert. The comparison left Sherlock both flattered and frustrated. He was not some blushing maiden that needed protection against the world, and yet having John’s concern felt nothing like the overbearing control of his brother. Still, this was the vigilance of a trained soldier, and it was being applied to _this flat_ , and to Sherlock.

It was no wonder John was exhausted.

There had been an overall heightened level of apprehension at Baker Street of late and Sherlock couldn’t help but feel that _before_ , he would have been able to put the pieces together. He would have figured things out and fixed them, so that John needn’t have bothered. Instead, John was shouldering the entire burden himself, and Sherlock was utterly useless.

Sherlock lurched out of his chair and began pacing with frustration. There were so many thoughts vying for his attention, he wished he could just rip open his skull and sort them out on the floor. Sherlock’s head was filled with a swirling, churning mass of confusion and wonder and John and danger and want and hope and John and uncertainty and JOHN!

John was the man who had given up everything he’d made of his life now to Sherlock. He’d encouraged Sherlock in his quest, not just to regain his memory, but to understand how to _think_ again. He was constantly surrounding Sherlock with gentle reminders of his life before, yet placing no burden of expectation upon him. With Mycroft, Sherlock had felt like his inability to restore his memory had been a source of constant disappointment. But with John, there was no pressure to remember, only opportunity. John had made it clear that if Sherlock got his memories back, then great. And if not, then that would be okay, too. He would still be here and that comfort and certainty left Sherlock with a warm ache in his chest and he had no idea what to do with it.

Sherlock stopped in front of the window overlooking Baker Street, and he sighed. He placed his hand upon the window and tried to let the cool pane of glass help him anchor his thoughts. It was not yet so late that the streets had emptied, and Sherlock spent long moments absently watching the cars and people go by. He was staring at the buildings across the street when movement in one of the upstairs windows caught his eye.

The building was several doors down, and the angle made it hard to gleam details, but the light was on in one of the flats. The window was open about a hand’s width, and the lack of curtains lent an unobstructed view of the corner of the room. A few empty crates were stacked in the corner and, as Sherlock watched, a forearm snaked out the opening and flicked the ash off of a cigarette. Sherlock wondered at the lack of a proper ash tray. A portion of the profile of a stocky man of average height came into view long enough to take a last drag off of the cigarette before flicking it onto the sidewalk and closing the window. The light in the flat went out, and Sherlock could see nothing more.

Perhaps it was undue paranoia, but Sherlock suddenly felt the need to off all of the lights. He even hit the ones in the stairwell and above the kitchen sink which John usually left on overnight. He went back to the window and watched, but the flat across the street remained dark and still. He wasn’t sure what it was about the smoker that caught his attention, but it felt good to let his mind focus on a single train of thought, and Sherlock wanted to follow it through. He sat at the window for a long time, eventually picking up a pencil and holding it between the first two fingers of his right hand. Sherlock eventually realized that he was stroking the eraser and was momentarily puzzled until he remembered that John had said he'd been a smoker.

Pleased with his deduction, Sherlock went over to stretch out on the sofa and think on how to procure himself a pack of cigarettes without John finding out. For some reason, it seemed like the kind of thing that John the doctor would take a bit of offense to.

Sherlock devoted some time to evaluating the taste craving he felt and debating whether or not did not his curiosity outweighed his desire to kiss John again. So consumed was he by these thoughts that it took a few moments for Sherlock to process the sounds he was hearing from the flat below. He heard the sound of a door being forced shut and footsteps, but not at the bottom of the stairs. There must be a door in the back of their land lady’s flat. It would most likely be off of the kitchen, which would lead into the alley where they kept the bins. Sherlock had heard John walking out that direction the other day when he’d taken out the garbage.

For a brief moment, Sherlock considers going down to investigate. John was in desperate need of an undisturbed night’s rest and Sherlock loathed awakening him, but something in the back of his mind told him that to go off without him would have been a bit not good. He carefully rose from the sofa and made his way out onto the landing in the stairwell. Sherlock listened for another moment, but heard nothing. As quietly as he could, Sherlock climbed the stairs to the third floor and John’s bedroom.

Sherlock had not yet been to John’s room, or at least not in the time that he could remember. He skipped turning on the lights and pondered the best way to wake him. Sherlock turned the door knob carefully and pushed into John’s room. The street lights filtering through the curtains were enough to illuminate John’s outline lying face up on the bed. He had his right arm curled up and over his head, tucked under his pillow and his left arm lying across his chest. Sherlock absently wondered if his shoulder was still sore from the rough manipulation of the joint while sparring. He took into consideration what he knew about John and his background and weighed it against the necessity for quiet before placing a hand on John’s shin, shaking it gently as Sherlock whispered his name.

The transition from sleep to wide awake was instantaneous. John sat straight up in the bed, blankets pooling at his waist as he twisted to reach under his pillow with his right hand to pull out a hand gun. John had the firearm leveled at Sherlock’s chest before he had the chance to do anything more than whisper, “John.”

“Sherlock?” John questioned in his sleep-roughened voice. Sherlock let go of John’s shin and raise both of his hands, palms out.

“Jesus,” John swore. “What the hell are you doing? It’s the middle of the night. Are you trying to get me to shoot you?”

“John, there’s someone in the flat downstairs. I heard a door in the back of the flat closing and footsteps.”

“Fuck,” John swore, looking at the clock on his bedside table, 1220 glaring back at him in red. “It’s too late for it to be Mrs. Hudson.” John swung his legs over the side of the bed. “What else did you hear?”

“I believe it’s a single person. There was no talking and only ever a single set of steps. They entered the flat quietly, so they either had a key or picked the lock. No sound of breaking of glass or the forcing of the bolt.

“Alright,” John said, swinging his legs over the side of the bed. “Stay here, Sherlock. I’m going to go check it out.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I’m coming with you.”

“Absolutely not,” John whispered fervently. “If we’re just a little unlucky, it’ll be some thug off the streets looking to pick up a bit of electronics or jewelry they can swap for drug money.” John swallowed and placed his left hand against the side of Sherlock’s neck and held him tight as John leaned into his space. “If we’re a lot unlucky, then they’re here because of you, and I’m not interested in risking your safety if that’s the case. So stay here. Call your brother and call Lestrade.”

“I’ll need your phone. I don’t know where I left the one Mycroft sent.”

John turned back to his night stand and swore. “I must have left it in my jacket. Alright, come on downstairs. Lock yourself in your bedroom and call for help.” John poked him in the chest as he spoke. “I mean it, Sherlock. Your first priority is to keep yourself safe.”

“No John, that’s your priority. Mine would be the complete reverse, obviously.”

“Oh, obviously,” John scoffed. “Fine. You want to protect me? Get me some back up. Now let’s go.”

They crept down the stairs, Sherlock a step behind as John led the way with his gun. Once on the second floor landing, John nodded towards the open door to their sitting room and stood watch until Sherlock had disappeared inside. “Lock the door,” he’d whispered to Sherlock before pulling it shut.

Sherlock stood still and listened for the sound of John’s steps going down the stairs but he was almost completely silent. Sherlock shifted his focus to finding a phone and searched in the dark for John’s jacket. He found it hanging on the back of one of the kitchen chairs but when Sherlock pulled out John’s mobile, he found that the battery had run out during the night.

Swearing under his breath, Sherlock tried to think of where he had put the mobile that Mycroft had sent him. He was about to go look in his bedroom when he heard the clattering sound of someone knocking over a table downstairs. All thoughts of calling in reinforcements fled as Sherlock went to check on John.

He took the steps quickly and found that by keeping his feet to the outer edge of the steps he didn’t make a sound. Sherlock made a mental note of the fact for later use peered through the railing as he went.

The street lights did not reach the interior of the building on this level, and as a consequence, it was impossible to see anything beyond the vaguest outline of the space. Sherlock crept to the bottom of the stairs, noting that the front door seemed undisturbed with the bolt still latched.

The sound of drawers being pulled in what Sherlock assumed was the back bedroom caught his attention, and he edged his way down the hall.

_“Freeze,”_ Sherlock heard John say in a firm voice which broke no argument. _“Place your hands on top of your head and turn around slowly.”_

Sherlock held his breath, and then started at what sounded like a shelf of books tumbling to the floor. Sherlock heard John swear and then a grunt as two bodies collided and one of them hit the floor. Without further thought, Sherlock stepped into the flat and attempted to make his way towards John. He kept his stance wide and center of gravity low, so that when a stocky body came barreling down the hall, Sherlock was ready for him.

He led into the body with his shoulder, wrapping an arm around the intruder’s waist and spinning him off balance. The man stumbled away from Sherlock and into the wall, landing with a thud and string of swearing in a heavy, uneducated accent. _Grew up in Liverpool_ , Sherlock though absently. _But hasn’t been back in years_. Enough light came through the front room curtains that Sherlock could see the outline of the intruder. He reestablished his balance rushed the man as he righted himself. The man was short, shorter than John, and his low center of gravity made it hard for Sherlock to off balance him. They grappled and Sherlock felt himself thrown to the side, knocking into a plant stand and sending the heavy pot crashing to the floor.

Sherlock threw his elbow and winced in pain as he felt it make contact with his assailant’s face. He heard John run into the room and caught what he thought was _“Shit, Sherlock. No!”_ before his assailant grabbed him by the elbow and spun Sherlock to the side, throwing him bodily into John. The two of them crashed to the floor in a tangle that forced the breath out of them both.

The intruder dashed around them and Sherlock heard the door through the kitchen bang open as he escaped into the night.

“Fucking hell, are you alright?” Sherlock felt steady hands gripping his shoulders move to gently touch his face.

“Yes,” Sherlock answered absently. “I’m fine. Come on, we can still catch up with him.”

John rolled Sherlock onto his back and pinned him with his weight. “Like HELL I’m gonna let you go tearing off after that guy in the middle of the night! Sherlock, what were you thinking? You were supposed to be upstairs, calling for help.”

“Your phone was dead, and you could have been hurt.”

“I had a gun!”

“Which you didn’t use.”

“Because I couldn’t do so without risk of hitting you!”

They both lay there panting with fury and exertion for a moment, the streetlights shining off of the layer of sweat on John’s brow.

“I can’t lose you, John,” Sherlock cried.

John dropped his head onto Sherlock’s shoulder and spoke against his skin. “Nor I you, you big tit.” John sighed. “You scared me half to death there.”

“Likewise,” Sherlock breathed.

John sat up and climbed off of Sherlock’s lap to kneel next to him. “Are you hurt?”

Sherlock took a moment to take stock of his own body. “I think I hit my head on a plant.”

“Heh,” John laughed, helping Sherlock to sit up. “You and your noggin.” John had set aside his gun and Sherlock felt gentle fingers carding through is hair, checking for injury. Sherlock hissed as John prodded a tender spot. “Bit of a knot, but you don’t appear to be bleeding. Any dizziness, disorientation or problems with your vision?”

“Aside from the fact that it’s the middle of the night and we’re sitting on the floor in an unfamiliar flat with the lights off?” 

John chuckled and used the pads of his fingers to check over the rest of Sherlock’s head. The fingers on his left hand caught on the rough texture of scar tissue on Sherlock’s right temple. He traced the ridge gently with his fingertips and did not fail to notice how Sherlock’s breath had gone shaky.

“Does this hurt here?”

Sherlock shook his head, _no_. “It’s sensitive, but not so much to the touch. Perhaps vulnerable is the right word for it. I feel very exposed when you touch me there.”

“Should I stop?” 

“John,” Sherlock started, his voice sounding broken.

“I should stop,” John sighed. “Sorry.”

John stood up and reached down to grasp Sherlock under his arm and haul him to his feet. “I’m just going to secure that back door, and then we can head back upstairs and get you a bit of ice for your skull. We’ll charge my phone and I can call Greg in the morning.”

. . .

John caught a nap on the sofa while Sherlock kept watch, but he got up just after daybreak to call Greg about the break in downstairs. Greg came over and talked to the both of them together at first. He then banished Sherlock to his bedroom with a copy of his latest case file for entertainment and called in an official report. Greg took John’s statement again while they waited for the local constabulary, this time taking notes and helping John to combine his and Sherlock’s observations to read as if they were all John’s. John appreciated that he wouldn’t have to outright lie about the events in order to keep Sherlock’s involvement off the record. Once the official business was done, Greg helped John right the furniture a bit before he, too, had to leave for the office.

John found a broom and dustpan and cleaned up the dirt and dried leaves from the plant that they’d knocked over in the struggle. _Mrs. Hudson is going to be so pissed about that plant,_ he thought. Some house sitter he’d turned out to be. John made a mental note to buy Mrs. Hudson something nice in apology. After depositing the broom and dustpan in the hall closet, John checked the lock on the front and back doors one more time, thinking he ought to talk to Mrs. Hudson about install a sliding latch in a place that couldn’t be reached through a broken window.

John was still tired, and yet too keyed-up to get any proper rest. He made his way back upstairs and paused in the kitchen. He thought longingly of a hot caffeinated beverage, but there was something he wanted to follow up on with Sherlock first.

The door to Sherlock’s bedroom was closed but at his knock, John heard him say “You can come in.”

John opened the door to find Sherlock sitting on the end of his bed, turning what looked like a small leather wallet over in his hands. At John’s inquiring eyebrow Sherlock tossed the thing over and John caught it out of the air with one hand. When he flipped it open, John saw that the wallet held Greg’s warrant card identifying him as a Detective Inspector, placed opposite a silver representation of the logo for the Metropolitan Police. “Did you nick this from him just now?” John asked, disappointment bleeding through every word.

“No,” Sherlock shook his head. “I found that in a shoe box the other day while I was looking for a compass. That and two others just like it.” Sherlock smiled, looking down at his empty hands as he started pushing at the cuticles with his thumbs. John recognized the motion as a nervous habit of Mycroft’s and John wondered why he’d never noticed Sherlock doing it before. Perhaps it was something he picked up in his recent stay in his brother’s home.

“It was one of those things that felt familiar.” Sherlock smiled up at John’s shocked look. “Yes, I know that is something that you have been meaning to ask about. You really are quite transparent, sometimes.”

John huffed out a laugh and walked over to sit at Sherlock’s side. “How come you never said, then?”

“It took a while for me to be sure. I had been getting these feelings, impressions of a sort, from a multitude of things. I believe the term ‘déjà vu’ would be most applicable. Certain items, people or places would seem vaguely familiar, although I couldn’t place them in any particular memory.”

“Give us an example,” John prompted.

Sherlock glanced at John and then turned away. “I could look at the picture on that card, and although I had no idea who Gregory Lestrade was, something told me that I could trust him. Upon meeting the man, I feel as if I was right. I do trust him and you seem to as well, and yet I feel like I’ve just met him.” Sherlock stopped playing with his cuticles and dropped his hands to the bed beside his thighs.

“It could be a side effect of the amnesia to want to implicitly trust the people that want to help you,” John offered.

“No, I don’t think so. Take Mycroft, for example. From the time I left hospital, there was always this unexplainable urge to say _no_ to whatever he asked. I did not understand why, but I felt defensive around him from the very beginning. I am sure he caught on, though. For a time, he had taken to asking me things he knew I would want, just to see what I would do.” Sherlock smiled ruefully. “I had to drink a lot of coffee without sugar before I started taking my breakfast alone.”

John laughed. “That’s inhuman, messing with a man’s coffee like that.” He smacked Sherlock’s thigh with the back of his hand. “What else?”

Sherlock frowned, his gaze turned away in thought. “There are lumps under the wall paper above the sofa on the left hand side. You cannot see them from across the room and would not know they’re there except by feel. Yet somehow, I knew to rub my hand along that section of wall.”

“Bullet holes,” John nodded. “Mrs. Hudson had that wall re-papered after you went away.”

“Hmm. Was that me?”

John laughed out loud. “Yeah. You’re a right terror when you’ve got nothing to keep you occupied. What else have you got?”

Sherlock got a thoughtful look on his face. “Was I afraid of the water?”

“Um, no.” John frowned. “Not that I ever noticed. Might have to check with Mycroft on that one, though. Why do you ask?”

“There was one disastrous attempt by my physiotherapist to get me into a swimming pool to help with recovery from the injury to my shoulder. It made me wonder.”

John bit his lip, wondering how much he should say. “I guess that confrontation with Moriarty never really made it into the blog. Oh Hell, Sherlock. There is just SO much that happened that I never wrote down. Some of it was because of national security concerns or confidence issues with clients. Other times it was because I wanted to gloss over the parts where you or I had done something illegal, which, I’m sad to say, was pretty often.”

“I would very much like for you to tell me about them, if you would.”

“Yeah. I can do that.” John paused, steeling himself to ask what was really on his mind. “And what about me?” John asked, turning to look at Sherlock’s profile.

Sherlock turned to John and held his gaze. “You were so very complicated, John. Everything else brought up simple things. Feelings I could at least put a name to, even if I did not understand their origin. I felt animosity towards Mycroft and when I acted upon it, he responded as if it were familiar dance between us. The same thing happened with Greg. My interactions with the man only reinforced that the impressions I had already formed were accurate. But you,” Sherlock turned away and dropped his gaze into his lap where he’d started worrying at his fingers again. “You are infinitely more complex than all of them.”

“What do you mean?” John asked, hearing his voice come out rougher than he’d expected.

Sherlock tilted his head slightly, still holding eye contact. “You stepped onto the porch that first day and my heart started racing. I felt like I’d run a mile and wanted to _laugh_ about it, yet I had no idea why. But above all else, I felt safe. And when I followed you up the stairs into this flat, for the first time in my memory, I truly felt like I was coming home.” Sherlock took his hand and placed it over John’s where it rested on the bed between them.

“I tried to figure out what all of this means, and I thought I knew, but when I acted upon these feelings, you told me that I was wrong. That the ‘us’ that I imagined never was. I find it so confusing, John.”

John cleared his throat, looking down as he turned his hand over to grip Sherlock’s tight. “We always sort of defied definition, you and I.” John smiled, fondly, if not a little sad. “We bickered like an old married couple, about ridiculous stuff like the mess on the kitchen table or whose turn it was to pick up milk. Everyone thought there was something there. Maybe they saw something that we couldn’t. Or hell, I don’t know. Perhaps I was the one that was blind. You’re pretty sharp. I bet you knew all along and were just waiting for me to catch up.”

“Have we caught up with each other now?” Sherlock asked hopefully.

John looked up and brought his other hand to rest against Sherlock’s jaw, holding him in place. John searched his face for some clue as to what was happening between them. He saw hope and uncertainty, tinged with apprehension. There was excitement as well. John could feel Sherlock’s pulse thrumming under his fingertips where they rested against his chin.

“Not yet,” John said softly and Sherlock closed his eyes as he leaned into John’s touch. “But if you can wait for me, I think I’m getting there.”

. . .

Eventually the activities of the night before caught up with him and John fell asleep on the sofa with his book lying open on his chest. He awoke in the afternoon to Sherlock shaking his shoulder. “John!” he whispered frantically. “John, wake up. There’s someone in the flat downstairs.”

John sat up, instantly awake. He stood slowly, stepping quietly towards the door. The sound of steps at the bottom of the stairs had John cursing himself for stashing his gun back in his bedroom when he called Lestrade.

“Yoo hoo,” came the shout from down stairs. “John! Are you in?”

“Shit,” John swore, placing a hand on Sherlock’s chest. “Stay here,” he instructed, giving Sherlock a hard glare before turning to practically run down the stairs, intercepting Mrs. Hudson on the landing.

“John! There you are.”

“Mrs. Hudson, you’re back.” John met her on the landing and gently tried to steer her back towards her own flat. “Has it been three weeks already?”

“I left a message on your mobile. She’s out of the brace now, and I just couldn’t take another day of her - Oh! Oh my!” Mrs. Hudson had put a hand to her chest. “Sherlock?”

_Son of a bleeding buggering fuck!_ John followed her gaze back up to the top of the stairs to see Sherlock sticking his head out of the door to their sitting room.

“Come now, Mrs. Hudson,” John took her arm and tried to guide her down the stairs. “Let’s have ourselves a sit down and we can explain everything.”

Mrs. Hudson twisted her elbow out of John’s grasp and marched up the stairs surprisingly fast for all the trouble she had with that hip. “Sherlock Holmes!” she cried, forcing her way into the flat. She marched right up into Sherlock’s space until she had him backed up against the desk.

She delivered a powerful open handed slap across his face, but before John could step in Mrs. Hudson had pulled Sherlock down into a fierce embrace. “Shame on you for putting John through all of that!” Her words were disapproving, but the undercurrent of warm emotion could not be denied.

Sherlock frowned, uncertainty written across his face. “It was wholly unintentional, I assure you.”

“Um, Mrs. Hudson.” John had made his way back up the stairs and placed a gentle hand on her shoulder. “There’s something we need to explain.”

Mrs. Hudson spun around and smacked John on the shoulder. Hard. “You’re damn right you have a bit of explaining to do. How long have you been keeping this to yourself?”

“Just a few weeks now, I swear,” John replied, rubbing his arm. Why people always had to go for the left side, he didn’t know. “Though the wait was mostly Mycroft’s doing. If you’d like to hit him the next time he comes round, that would be fabulous. But please make sure that I’m around to see it.”

Mrs. Hudson harrumphed and turned back to Sherlock. “Since when have you taken to listening to that brother of yours? And here I thought you didn’t get on.” Sherlock’s face twitched, his eyebrows coming together in a gesture of vague confusion.

“Well I…”

John took pity on him and took Mrs. Hudson by the arm and successfully led her to the sofa. “Let’s all just sit down shall we?”

John offered to make tea but was waved off by their not-housekeeper. “I’ll have none of that procrastination out of you. You’ve both got a lot to explain, so best be getting on with it.”

“Well,” John started. “The thing is…”

“I have amnesia.” Sherlock’s bluntness cut through Mrs. Hudson’s strict façade and melted it into one of grave concern.

“Oh my goodness!” She reached out and took his large hands in her own, drawing him down onto the sofa next to her.

“When I fell I hit my head and caused severe internal bleeding. The farce of my death had already been prepared for, so my brother had his people secret me away to a secure location for medical treatment. I’m told that I was comatose for almost a week and that when I woke up I, had no comprehension of who I was or what had happened.”

“Do you…” she gave John a pitying look. “You don’t remember us at all, do you?”

Sherlock shook his head. “I know nothing beyond what John has told me. Your name is Martha Hudson and I was somehow involved in a case against your husband, which led to his execution at the hands of the Florida penal system. You inherited this building after his death and had rented the upstairs flat to John and myself at below market rate for a year and a half. You have a younger sister living in Westham but no other living family. You play a mean game of bridge and make a marvelous lemon scone.”

“Oh Sherlock,” Mrs. Hudson said fondly as she squeezed his hands gently. “Such a charmer.”

Sherlock swallowed visibly, but made sure he held her kind gaze. “I am sorry for the pain I’ve caused you. John seems to think it was a worthwhile cause and I have come to value his opinion on such matters very much. I only hope that you will permit me the chance to make it up to you.” Sherlock turned his palms over, easily encircling her delicate hands with his own. “I do not know you, but I find myself more comfortable in your presence than that of anyone that I have met since I woke up. I would very much like to get to know you again, if you would grant me that honor.”

“Sherlock.” She brought her hands up to cup his face, leaning in to touch her forehead against his. “You and that silly brain of yours. Always making trouble.” She rose from the couch and turned towards the kitchen. “Now tell me that you have eggs in that fridge of yours. I feel that I have a bit of baking to catch up on.”

. . .

True to form, the lemon scones were divine. Mrs. Hudson invited them downstairs for tea and John sat back while she related stories from her youth. He watched as Sherlock smiled fondly and hung on her every word. John appreciated how Mrs. Hudson kept qualifying her stories: _I never did tell you about the time that I…_ and _I was always meaning to show you…_ The constant and unflappable Mrs. Hudson always was a rock when they needed her most. She had been there for John while he grieved Sherlock’s death and was there to smooth the way now that he was back.

When Sherlock had gotten up to retrieve the scrapbook Mrs. Hudson had kept of the news clippings from her late husband’s trial, she had looked from John to her half-dead fern to Sherlock’s back and then sighed dramatically. She then smiled at John in a way that said _I suppose you’ve had more important things to be getting on with_ and John felt somewhat forgiven for his negligence.

Once his sleepless night caught up with him, Sherlock excused himself with one last long embrace and a promise that he would bring back her book of news clippings as soon as he was done with them. John rinsed their cups in the sink while Mrs. Hudson wrapped the last of her scones in cellophane for John to take back upstairs. John placed their cups in the draining board and opened a drawer to pull out a clean dish towel.

“It’s strange how much he’s changed,” she said as she came up beside John. “And then again, hardly at all.”

“Yeah,” John agreed.

“It’s almost like someone took the same old Sherlock and smoothed over all the rough edges. He’s kinder, in a way. And yet I’m not entirely sure he knows why.”

John turned around and leaned against the sink. “I know what you mean. Sometimes I feel like he’s being nice because he knows that’s what he’s supposed to be doing, even though it may not feel natural. He’s just so,” John waved the dish towel around, searching for the right words to describe how different it was to deal with a Sherlock that had _feelings_. Perhaps he always had, but John was certainly more accustomed to Sherlock keeping them to himself. “Touchy feely, I guess. I wonder if he’s not just clinging to what he does know in order to make up for what he’s forgotten.”

John knew that inappropriate levels of affection were not an uncommon trait in amnesiac patients. This was especially true with regards to their care givers, of which John was to some extent. That Sherlock was feeling insecure and attempting to use physical closeness to ground himself was not unusual, all things considered. What was unsettling was how desperately John wanted to cling back. 

“Now don’t you go and doubt yourself now,” Mrs. Hudson chided him. “Just because you’ve not seen something before doesn’t mean it’s new. You said yourself that he’s been in his brother’s care for months and yet still shows him the same disdain he always has. Sherlock’s feelings were always there, under the surface. It’s just that now he doesn’t remember feeling like he needed to hide them.”

John shook his head. “No, this is different. I mean, I really think I’d have noticed…”

Mrs. Hudson placed a warm hand him on the arm. “You can keep telling yourself that if you need to, but I’ve seen the way that man looks at you. You are no one’s hand railing, John Watson. And you never were.” She squeezed John’s arm reassuringly and took the dish towel from his grasp. “That look’s been there a lot longer than you think.”

. . .

Sleep was difficult to find for John that night. Between his afternoon nap and thoughts of his conversations with both Sherlock and Mrs. Hudson occupying his mind, it was quite late before he was finally able to drift off. As a consequence, he was late to rise the next morning, yet felt groggy and under-rested.

He found Sherlock sitting in the middle of a mess at the kitchen table. The plate of scones that Mrs. Hudson had sent up with John last night were perched precariously close to the edge of the table, pushed out of the way of Sherlock’s spread. The newspaper articles he’d collected from Mrs. Hudson had been laid out amongst what looked like Sherlock’s own notes on the case.

“Don’t you have a desk for this sort of business?” John said shortly.

“Hmm,” Sherlock answered non-committal. “Not enough space.”

“It’s a double wide desk.”

“Yes, but I’ve got all of the photographs I could find of bodies left to decompose in an environment that was both warm and humid. There isn’t space.”

“Well why don’t you pick those up to _make_ space,” John said, quickly losing his temper.

“No time.”

“Oh for Christ’s sake,” John snapped before going over to the desk. “I live here, too.”

“Don’t,” Sherlock shouted from the kitchen. “I have them in a very particular order.”

“GOD DAMN IT, SHERLOCK!” John kicked at the desk, causing a few of the photos to flutter to the floor. “Do you have to take over every available bit of space in the entire flat? I just want a place where I can sit and eat my breakfast.”

Sherlock stood up from the table and took a step towards John. “I don’t understand what you’re so upset about. You usually take your toast and sit in your chair while you read the paper.”

“Yeah, well maybe I wanted to eat at a table today. Did you consider that?”

“You have a pattern, John. Why would you change it?”

“You know what, sod this. I’m going out.”

“John?”

“I just need some air,” John shouted, stuffing his wallet and keys into his pockets and heading for the door.

“Where are you going?”

“Out, Sherlock. I’m going out.”

“But,”

“LEAVE it.” John stomped down the stairs and out onto the sidewalk of Baker Street. The day was clear and sunny, yet a bit breezy and John felt chilled. He crossed his arms and tucked in his hands, hunching in upon himself. Not half a block away, and John already felt badly for the way he’d shouted at Sherlock. To make it worse, he wasn’t entirely sure what it is he was upset about. A messy flat was nothing new. The constant stress and uncertainty that had enveloped his life since Sherlock’s return had come to a head this morning and he needed some space to think.

Yes, a walk would do nicely. John picked up the pace to try to build up enough warmth to carry him through a respectable amount of time to let his temper cool.

. . .

As soon as John slammed the front door, Sherlock ran to the sitting room window that looked out over Baker Street. He watched as John walked out of the shadow of the building and squinted up at the sky before pulling his arms in to his body as if he needed to conserve heat. He hunched his shoulders and started walking south on Baker Street to a destination unknown. Watching John leave while so obviously upset left Sherlock deeply unsettled. He rested his head against the window and sighed, watching John march across the street and disappear around the corner.

Sherlock was about to turn and do something to contain his work and pass the time until John’s return when he noticed a man emerge from one of the doorways on the east side of the street. Sherlock instantly recognized him as the man John had caught following them in Reagents Park. He now sported a spectacular bruise over his left eye that Sherlock thought might be a perfect match for his own elbow.

The man pulled out his mobile and held it to his ear as he jogged down the sidewalk after John.

John.

Sherlock quickly pulled out his phone and shot off a text to John.

_Go some place safe. You are being followed._

Sherlock held his breath, waiting for John to reply and hoping the gravity of the situation would supersede his anger. He was startled to hear a text notification coming from the sofa. Cursing his luck, Sherlock dug his hands into the depths of the cushions. John must have dropped his phone while he napped the day before. Sherlock pulled out the mobile, its new message light flashing defiantly.

Sherlock ran back to the window to see if he could tell which direction John had gone when something else caught his eye. The curtains on the window of one of the second story flats on the opposite side of the street had been disturbed. It was the same window at which he’s seen the man smoking just before the break in at Mrs. Hudson’s. Sherlock distinctly remembered a lack of curtains at that time.

As he watched, Sherlock saw the curtains part once again to reveal a man he did not recognize. He was in his late forties and had the tanned, weathered complexion of a man who had spent a great deal of his life outdoors. He sported a receding salt and pepper hairline and a dark mustache. The cuffs of his white shirt sleeves had been rolled up to the elbow and he had a cigarette hanging from his lips. As Sherlock watched, the man pushed a low, wide coffee table up to the edge of the window and began to set up what appeared to be a long range rifle on a tripod. The man pulled at the curtains so that only a gap of only a few inches was left through which to view the street. 

He had aimed his weapon at the door to 221B.

Sherlock stepped back from the window and looked around the empty room that he stood in. The sniper’s timing and placement made Sherlock’s stomach clench. While it was certainly possible that he was waiting for Sherlock to come out, the chance that he was waiting for John to come home could not be discounted. This was the danger that Mycroft had warned him about and here Sherlock was, helpless to stop it. He had to do something, and fast. There was no telling how soon John would return and time was of the essence. 

Sherlock took the stairs up to John’s room two at a time. He didn’t get a good look at the room the night before, but he was certain he could find the place in which John kept his gun.

Bursting into the room, Sherlock tried not to feel odd about invading John’s space. It was the work of a moment to find the right drawer. John had hidden his hand gun and ammunition amongst carefully rolled socks, as well as a few items of a more personal nature which Sherlock did not have the time to think about just now but would _definitely_ want to return to later.

Sherlock had checked the clip and the safety without even realizing that he had known how. He ran back down to his bedroom to pick up the pair of handcuffs that he’d found stashed with Lestrade’s warrant card and slip them into his pocket. Sherlock picked up the suit jacket that still hung on the chair and threw it on to hide the gun in his waist band. He sent out another quick text before bounding down the stairs and slipping out the door that led from Mrs. Hudson’s kitchen into the alley behind their building. He went north until he came out at the head of the cross street that led to the park. Sherlock slipped into the late morning crowd and crossed Baker Street, before back-tracking, keeping hidden under the awnings as best as he could. The angle from the window where he’d seen the sniper was too sharp for him to see Sherlock slip into the unlocked doorway leading up to the block of flats.

Sherlock kept to the outer wall as he quietly crept up the stairs. There were three doors on the second floor. Sherlock bypassed the one with a cross stitched welcome sign and the one with the Diwali door hangings to come to stand before an unadorned door at the end of the hall. He tried the handle and was somewhat unsurprised to find it unlatched. Sherlock pulled out John’s gun and pushed the door open, wincing at the faint creak of its hinges. He left the door open and inched down the hallway until he could see the window with the view of his front door. The rifle was still set up on the table, but the sniper was nowhere to be seen.

“Sherlock Holmes, what a pleasant surprise.”

Sherlock started at the voice in the doorway behind him and spun around. 

“Ah ah ah,” the man chided, aiming his own handgun directly at Sherlock’s chest. “Let’s put that down, shall we.”

Sherlock lowered his arm and bent at the knees until he could lay John’s gun on the floor.

“Now stand up, nice and slowly. Turn around and walk into the front room. Stand against the wall, just there,” he indicated the space recently vacated by the table that was now in front of the window. “Face the wall and lace your fingers together behind your head.”

Sherlock did as instructed. He could hear the man crouch in the entryway and retrieve Sherlock’s weapon. He then came up behind Sherlock and pat down his sides. Sherlock was relieved of the hand cuffs and his mobile phone, before the man stepped back to place his finds on the shelf against the far wall.

“You can turn around now. No need to keep your hands up, either.”

“I believe I am at a loss. You seem to know who I am, but I do not know you.”

“How rude of me. Where are my manners? Colonel Sebastian Moran,” the man replied as he spread his arms wide and mock bowed. “At your service.”

. . .

John’s anger faded quickly as he stalked down Baker Street. He was already beginning to feel guilty about yelling at Sherlock this morning. It wasn’t fair of him to take his frustrations out on his friend. Since he was walking this direction, John might as well hit up the Sainsbury’s for a few essentials. He’d shoot Sherlock a text and see if there was anything he wanted from the shops. John would make up something decent for lunch as a way of apologizing and then maybe they could sit down and talk about it.

John reached into his pocket to grab his mobile, but swore when he realized he’d left it back at the flat. He came to a stop with the crowd at the crosswalk at Marylebone Road. He wasn’t ready to go back to the flat just yet, but John felt uncomfortable going out without giving Sherlock a way to get a hold of him if he needed anything. 

As the light changed and the morning crowd surged forward John held back, thinking. Out of the corner of his eye he caught sight of a man with a spectacular shiner making an abrupt stop to peruse the window display of a property management group. The man appeared to be quite fascinated with listings which John knew had to be way out of his league.

John skipped the Sainsbury’s and made a right, going about fifty meters before stopping in front of a news stand to browse. Sure enough, while he was perusing the racks, John caught sight of the man coming around the corner. He appeared to be having a clipped conversation on his mobile before pocketing it and slowing down outside of a café. The man loitered and checked his watch, for all intents looking like he was waiting on someone. John waited until a group of older women came bustling up to the café for brunch. The boisterous gaggle provided a much needed moment of distraction and John took off, dashing through crowded sidewalk and out of sight before the man had a chance to notice that John was gone.

John couldn’t be certain, but the man tailing him today could easily be the very same that had followed John and Sherlock on their walk in Regents Park. A terrible feeling settled in John’s chest and he stepped up the pace. He had to get back to the flat as quickly as possible.

He had to warn Sherlock.

. . .

Sherlock winced as Moran closed the handcuffs around his wrists tightly. Sherlock had attempted to fight him the first time Moran tried to restrain him and was rewarded with several heavy blows from a boot. Sherlock had made a grab for the man’s gun, but he was quick for his age. Career military, to judge by the way he held he fought. Special forces, of a sort. Sniper, going by the setup he had at the window. Moran had disabled Sherlock with a sharp blow to the back of the head and then manhandled Sherlock upright and affixed him to the radiator.

“Is this really necessary?”

“Of course it is. I’ve got one last job to finish and I don’t want you getting in my way.”

“A bit obsessive, don’t you think? Your boss has been dead a year. Surely you can’t still be expecting a payout.”

“The job was pre-paid,” Moran said as he set his own hand gun onto the shelf beside John’s. “Call the follow through a matter of professional integrity.

“Nothing better to do with your time?”

“I keep busy. This really is the sort of business I should outsource, but a man has to take pleasure in his career.”

“You’ve killed before.” Sherlock tipped his head to the side, considering Moran critically. “And recently.”

“I’ll kill again, too. And soon.” Moran smiled, remorseless. It made Sherlock shiver, this inability to reason with his captor. “Just as soon as the Captain gets his pretty little arse home, in fact. I’m ready to tie this up and move on.”

“John?” Sherlock pulled at where the cuffs anchored him in place. “Why?” he questioned, failing to subdue the panic in his voice. “What does he have to do with it? You’ve got me. Why not just take me and go?”

“And leave poor Captain Watson all alone again?” Moran tutted. “I think not.” He put another cigarette to his lips and produced a lighter from his pocket. He lit up and took a slow drag and releasing the smoke from his lungs slowly and letting it curl up towards the ceiling. Sherlock was quite certain that any latent curiosity he’d held about smoking was well and truly gone now.

“Besides. He was the mark, not you. You,” Moran said, pointing at Sherlock with his cigarette. “You were just the signal. Holmes lives, Watson dies. It was simple, really. Elegant. I always liked that about Jim.”

“James Moriarty was insane,” Sherlock replied darkly. 

“And a genius. Mustn’t forget that bit. Of course, I thought you were supposed to be a genius, too, and look how dumb you turned out to be.”

“What makes you say that?” If Sherlock could just keep him talking, pull his attention away from the window, perhaps John could slip by. Get into the flat and… what? Find Sherlock missing. Had Sherlock left John’s mobile where he could find it? Would John call him? Or Lestrade? Or would he instead decide to look for Sherlock himself and walk right out the front door and into Moran’s sight?

“Well, you’ve been in hiding for over eleven months. I was skeptical at first, but after a while I figured you must have been dead to have been so dreadfully quiet for so long. Couldn’t risk it, though. So I left a bottom feeder here to keep an eye on things. A foul-mouthed little shite and an idiot to boot, but he recognized when things changed with Watson and that was the important bit.” Moran took another long drag of his cigarette and eyed Sherlock critically.

“I come by to see for myself, and voila! Here you are. So I put the rest of my affairs on hold and then set myself up here to wait for the perfect opportunity. Whatever set the Captain off in a little huff this morning, he won’t be gone long. All I have to do is wait here for him and then I can finish the job.”

“That could be hours,” Sherlock drawled. “How do you plan to keep me entertained until then?”

Moran smiled and it sent a cold chill down Sherlock’s spine. He knelt in front of Sherlock, close enough to reach out and grab Sherlock by the chin and force him to meet his eyes. “We don’t have hours, Holmes. We’ve got minutes. You see, I got a call just as I saw you slinking down the sidewalk and up to my door. Watson’s already on his way back.”

“Actually, he’s already here.”

Sherlock gasped when he realized John had slipped into the room while Moran was focused on Sherlock. Moran had stashed both handguns on the other side of the room, where they’d be out of Sherlock’s reach. Unlucky for him, they were out of his reach, too. 

Moran slipped a hunting knife out of a pocket in his trousers but John was faster. He’d picked up what looked like a cricket bat somewhere along the way and swung it at Moran’s head as the man turned towards hi. The wood connected with flesh with a sickening thwack and Moran crumbled, unconscious, his knife skidding across the floor.

“A cricket bat?”

John shrugged. “It’s what I could find. It was either that or the harpoon and there was no way I was getting across the street with that unnoticed.” He checked on Moran first.

“Did you kill him?” Sherlock asked, hopeful.

John scowled. “Of course not. Why would I want to do that?”

“He kicked me. In the head.”

John knelt in front of Sherlock and began checking him for injury. “Contrary to what you seem to think, I don’t actually want to kill anyone for you. Wouldn’t have been an issue if some idiot hadn’t made off with my gun.”

“Nonsense. Moran is a trained killer. He’d have never backed down. You would have had to shoot him. At least this way you were able to take him by surprise.”

John turned at the sound of steps pounding up the stairs. He picked up the cricket bat and held it up high, but let his arm drop as Lestrade came barreling into the room.

“Sherlock, what the hell?”

“Ah, Detective Inspector,” Sherlock said. He held up his hands as best as he could with them anchored to the radiator. “Can I borrow your keys?”

. . .

“Alright then. Ambulance is on its way to A&E,” Greg said as he hung up his phone. “

John suddenly thought to ask “How _did_ you know we needed you?”

Lestrade fished his mobile out of his pocket and held it out for John to see.

_Need you to make arrest at 216 Baker Street in 20 mins. -SH_

John laughed. “And what are we arresting him for?”

“For the murder of Ronald Adair, of course.” Sherlock swept out of the bathroom, hair wet from where he’d washed the blood off his face, acting for all the world like he hadn’t just been kissed by a boot.

“Adair? I thought this had to do with Moriarty. How do you figure he was involved with Adair?” Greg questioned, his eyes wide.

“Take a closer look at his weapon. Blaser R8 hunting rifle, heavily modified. Monte Carlo stock and safari sights. It is a gun designed for big game hunters. The ammunition is a soft point British .303, not remarkably common these days but still a good choice for hunting bear.”

“Bears?” John queried.

“Yes John, do keep up. The bullets experience a slower expansion upon impact and yielding maximum penetration. Extremely important when hunting heavily-muscled game with thick hides.”

“Adair was not big game,” Greg pointed out. “Why use this sort of weapon?”

“Pride, I think. The Colonel was a lifelong hunter and expert military marksman. While he trained a gun at me during our initial confrontation, he set aside the weapon as soon as he had me secured. He does not _like_ the smaller guns. Finds them a bit plebian, I would bet. Soldiers will tend to cling to some element of their military service when they rejoin the civilian world, especially when their discharge was unexpected.”

John felt his cheeks flush and he turned away.

Greg was kind enough to pretend not to notice. “What makes you say his discharge was unexpected?”

“He’s bitter,” Sherlock replied. “An intelligent man and an exceptional marksman, Moran would have gone far within a military career. However, he loved the kill. Perhaps a little too much and he would have developed quite a taste for it. Before long, he would have became a liability. Moriarty would have snapped up a man of his skills before the ink had dried on his discharge papers.”

“Yeah, but how the hell am I supposed to write this one up?” Greg asked.

“What do you mean?” John asked.

“Well for starters, you’re still dead,” he said, pointing at Sherlock. “That’s a damn good catch on the Adair murder, but how the hell am I supposed to explain finding Moran here?”

“Anonymous tip?” John offered. “You had been in the area, asking around. Left your card with a few of people in the building.”

“Neighbors had already lodged one complaint of a suspicious person,” Sherlock pointed out. “While pursuing the issue you came to the door and found it ajar. Illegally modified hunting rifle perched at the window. Moran unconscious on the floor. Surely you can spin a suitable tale from there.”

“And Mycroft’s sorted out the paperwork on Sherlock,” John added. “So he’s technically not dead anymore, although I don’t think it’s become public knowledge just yet.”

“Best not push it, John. Let Greg take the credit for this one. As I understand it, I did owe him one.” Sherlock winked and Greg rolled his eyes. “Besides, it’s a simple enough process to match the bullet pulled from Adair’s body to this gun. Ammunition’s a match; that ought to be enough to get you a warrant. See if you can find any links to illegal card games amongst Adair’s affairs and there’s your connection to Moran.”

Greg had his hands on his hips and was shaking his head. “God, it’s good to have you back.” Other officers were starting to show up now and Greg waved them towards the door. “Alright you two. Get out of here. I’ll come by later and get a proper statement.”

“Ta,” John said as he gently steered Sherlock out of the room before anyone had a chance to recognize them.

. . .

“Come on, let’s get you upstairs. I know you won’t go to hospital, but at least put ice on your face and let me take a look at those ribs.”

“If you insist,” Sherlock acquiesced as he allowed John to ease Sherlock’s jacket off his shoulders so as not to cause him any more discomfort than necessary.

“So I guess this is what Mycroft meant when he wanted us to be careful. Do you think we should call him?”

“Definitely not.”

“What about the bloke that was tailing me? Shouldn’t we do something about him? Maybe get his description out there?” John supported Sherlock by the elbow as they climbed the steps to 221B. Now that they were behind closed doors, Sherlock had let the bravado act drop and was no longer hiding his discomfort.

“He was merely a bottom-rung lackey,” Sherlock waved off John’s concern. “He would have fled the moment he realized his employer was in police custody.”

“If you say so. We’ll still want to be extra careful, though.” John shook his head. 

“Hmm,” Sherlock replied non-committaly and sat in the chair John had pulled out from the kitchen table. “I meant to ask earlier, but how did you find me?”

John smiled. “I realized I was being followed pretty quickly. So I shook the tail and came around the corner in time to see you sneaking into the front door of that building. You seemed to be trying to stay out of the line of sight for one of the upstairs windows so I figured I’d better do the same.” John produced his med kit from one of the lower cupboards. “I let myself in the back door and didn’t go through the sitting room, in case the curtains weren’t pulled.” John set his kit on the table and met Sherlock’s eyes. “You scared the shit out of me, Sherlock. What were you thinking?”

“He was going to kill you,” Sherlock replied solemnly. “I don’t know that a lot of thought was involved.”

“Huh,” John replied. “I’m amazed that you’d admit to that, actually. The not thinking bit.”

“I find you make it difficult to think more often than I would like.”

John felt a grin tug at the corner of his lips. “Should I be sorry for that?” John asked as he picked up Sherlock’s hands to examine the abrasions left on his wrist from the handcuffs.

“Perhaps I misspoke. You make it difficult to think about anything _else_.”

“Now that was cheesy, Sherlock.”

“Head injury,” he replied, pointing to the bruise forming on his cheek.

“You and your bloody head.” John sighed and dabbed at the cut on Sherlock’s face with a damp flannel. “So, you solved a murder. Does this mean you’re ready to be publicly undead?”

Sherlock winced as John applied antiseptic to his cheek. “Is there a rush?”

“I know you’re letting Lestrade take the credit back there, but Moran could still talk. Things could get awful difficult around here if he goes public. The fervor in the press about you has died down, but I don’t doubt for a minute that they would be ready to eat you alive if it sold papers.”

“Hmm, perhaps you’re right,” Sherlock said, watching as John leaned over to fetch a cold pack from freezer. “The whole process sounds tedious, though. I’m sure Mycroft had a plan for this eventuality. Let him deal with it.”

John straightened up and wrapped the cold pack in a towel before handing it to Sherlock. “It is good to have you back, though. I missed this.”

“Is _this_ what we did? Before?” At John’s confused look, Sherlock went on to clarify. “Solve murders and then patch ourselves up at the kitchen table?”

John smiled fondly at him. “I believe we usually order take out at this point. And then tomorrow I’d write up an entry about the case for my blog.” John used his hand to hold Sherlock’s face steady and gently lifted Sherlock’s hand to apply the cold pack to his cheek. “But yeah, Sherlock. This is what we do.”

. . . The End . . .


End file.
